On February 28, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House from 11:07 am to 11:52 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 865-022 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
um before they came in to see you that's right i gave them a brief summary and also told them
You see, if they come in with a straight stone ball and so forth, the spurt is going to leak.
I told them that that was impossible.
They shifted their position, which I think was absolutely correct.
That's why there were many on the plane.
When you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, you've got to do it.
They run a bad wicket there.
But the other thing is more fundamental.
I'm trying to see whether I can get them to tell you some details of an interim settlement they'd be willing to accept so that we can get that thing started.
Well, then, to agree in principle to a continued exchange without telling them exactly what's going to be in that exchange until the trial is over.
I thought the interim settlement was much more difficult than getting the agreement on the general principles.
No, I think.
Well, the other is that the second is a language thing.
The Israelis are great at that.
The first is a substance thing, which they just don't want to do anymore.
No, they're so afraid that once they hear the general principles, they're going to be pressured into a noble sermon.
They were more receptive this morning to giving details in an interim agreement.
I told them...
We just couldn't stand here on this.
You just can't say, for example, for them to come in Henry, which is obvious from what I've seen.
I mean, they want more planes.
We're not going to get them.
They're not going to get it with, and not all of them, I think, because we've done it for four years, and nothing has happened.
Now, this doesn't mean we're going to force them, but we can't be in a position to say to the Congress, look, our planes, what about this side of the tunnel?
They ought to get it.
They need it.
I have to tell a few citizens to ask, you know, whether it's going to be balanced or not.
So they...
and they would elect any and all of their enemies, provided the Soviet stays out for five years, not anymore, because he says the advantage is in arms.
But they won't.
Which is a great tribute to how good they are.
At least that's his analysis.
They're certainly superior now.
Depends how much they don't put in.
That's really what it depends on.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Well, if they don't get any planes, then they're going to be bastards in negotiations.
So the question is... That's the point.
No, I'm all for it.
I'm all for it.
We've got to...
But you see, before we said give them the planes, we've given them so that they will not be bastards in negotiations.
We give them the planes, and they show they're bastards in negotiations.
Yeah.
Well, up to this point.
With the Jordanians, the Egyptians and I decided we didn't do anything.
but I agree that they have...
If I were they, I'd do the same thing, but it's a position that we can't be in because of other games we're playing.
I agree.
That's the question.
I agree all the time.
Now, if we could get them to sign on to some general principles, then we could trigger the interim agreement.
Well, you know very well that the general agreement...
We can't say that Egyptians were supposed to be.
They've got to realize that Egyptians get around to it.
I've lived in Oregon about three or four years.
That's my evaluation.
I think that's why the other call were significant.
We'll see how significant they were.
Well, I don't know what to say.
I can't get it.
call that he won't have to send it in by cable, and he wants to talk on the secure line, and we have been able to establish that yet.
And my impression is that their cable, and now they have said that as long, as soon as we agree to make the security of their people in South Vietnam, the first item of the agenda on the military commission,
i don't think i told you about it earlier well i think that uh listen i uh what i was trying to tell you was why do you get your advice on this too i think it's right
My feeling, Henry, is that if I don't do the rest of the day, which I think I should not, because hell, something should happen.
Nothing's going to happen.
I'm waiting for a tree.
I have to call the tree.
But then I should not do it Friday.
That's the only other day I can't do it, but the day she's here.
If I do it Friday, the problem is that it's just a bad day all the way around.
So I think I would do it Monday.
I'll go to surgery.
That gives me a chance to center down a bit.
My view is that if you were to decide to do it today at 3, you could be both tough and confident.
Because they cannot now have a showdown on it.
They are dying to get the economic commission organized.
Let me ask you this.
Forget the person who did send the message indicating that we would go forward with the commission, that we would.
Now, what I've done on the economic commission, I've told Sullivan to give them all the details, but then to express that his personal opinion, that it would never meet unless the prisoners, that he, that Sullivan should say that it's his, Sullivan's personal view that he's giving them for their education.
uh they know that this won't be in person with you at all yeah but given the economic commission given the fact that we stopped picking up the mines and that we are that they're jeopardizing our going out exactly i go wrong not to have richardson i don't i don't think richardson that could escalate it i don't think you should confirm that or deny it just i i believe in this that we ought to handle the week
If I read this morning.
It looked like we were acting tough, because you notice it looked like we, I know it must have irritated you that Bill Rodgers was there, but that we had directed him.
Do you remember?
Yes.
Oh, and a lot of news stories that the mood suddenly changed apparently.
But I think it's helpful.
The news...
The North Vietnamese need this conference more than we do.
And the South Vietnamese need our aid.
And he made a very tough presentation.
I don't know yet what she was going to do.
about the handling of the... Well, about the security of the, yeah.
Exactly.
That is, this is... And I told him... That's software.
Give it to him.
And also, the other thing, for Christ's sake, cool it.
Cool it between now and the time the prisoners are out.
Remember I told you it was predicted.
Every goddamn of the questions around God remaining, they wanted to put the B on Q for solving the prisoners.
He's so dumb because the North Vietnamese are going to be out of there anyway by the end of...
of March, and why he doesn't treat them with kid gloves is beyond my understanding.
And to stop these demonstrations.
And above all, and to stop this military operation, because the truth is,
80% of deceased fire violations are sadly made now.
You put in a thicker context of infiltrating personnel and so forth, they're on the job.
Well, they're both breaking the didn't expect.
Well, they're both Vietnamese.
But didn't we expect a lot of it?
Oh, yeah.
I didn't expect... You look at it, and I'm just talking about that some of our press friends are saying that
Well, a month later, the body is buried, and the war is worse than it ever was.
Now, bullshit.
What are they talking about?
You look at that level of incidents.
You know what those incidents are?
They talk about major and minor incidents.
What minor incidents are?
Somebody shoots a gun at somebody.
There's one or two artillery.
That's right.
But my point is, the casualties are what I look at.
And the casualties are goddamn low.
It is true that South Vietnamese Air Force is making 300 training flights a day.
That's great.
I'm all for it.
They're flying more now than they ever did.
They are about as bad as both of them.
But I think we're going to win this.
And your decision if you want to go out.
Today, we'll look back on it Monday, because it's certainly going to be done by the weekend.
Well, uh...
Thank you, sir.
I cheer you on.
My idea is that our style is one that's been pretty good throughout the years.
It's sort of plain and cool, and I don't go out and yam on this and that.
I look back, I was reading a writer's strange little book, not very fully written, but very, very much even quite, and I'll give you a copy of my treat.
Apparently, it was put out, and apparently the Kennedy's suppressed it.
They bought all the copies.
The only copy available was in the congressional library, something called Kennedy's 13th State.
You ever hear of it, Ron?
Sure.
My mouth is spinning.
You ever hear of it?
No.
Why, but didn't you read it?
Because it is.
It bears out some of the things that you have said, Henry, about the government.
what had happened at the time, and the bail payments, and so forth, just to hold us.
I didn't realize, as a minute, that he learned about this thing when he was one day a secretary, having to see the cable.
And he deliberately leaked it, because he didn't want it to happen.
It did happen.
He wanted it to fail.
And at the least, and therefore Peter's, in the times, I think it was about, you know, the fact of all this, of course, he was miserably handling it, but Peter holds on to that, oh yes, they were mixed, but he deliberately gave a story to the press all the time in that way.
you know state has done that for us all the time all the time this is a game in this time what i was going to say though i feel that sure i can go out but i think we're on with the the other stuff is going to come out
Uh, it's already out with troop patrol and it'll certainly be out with mining by the end of the week.
Right.
By Monday I'm sure you can come back on it.
I'd say yes.
You see, otherwise, Henry, I'll be involved if I went out today for 80% of the time, hanging around, well, there's a ceasefire, and are you discouraged?
This is not happening.
And Monday, if this does work out, I'll say, well, yes, we had a problem, but it's not all worked out.
We're going to go forward, and it's going to have other problems in the future.
I want your next question.
The other thing, too, is that the other reason I don't want to go out today is that I'm going to hang around A. I cannot talk about A.
It's going to be hard to talk about it anyway.
But I could never talk about it while the prisoners were in pass, even though I was not there.
So don't you agree you should go on A?
I think it's better, unless you have some reason for going to A.
In my instinct, it's better to go to A.
No, let's go to A, because of the fact that we have some change.
OK, well, then, Richardson's not going to A in the press forum.
The question is, how should Friedheim position us today?
Now, there are three options I'd probably carry.
One is, he's going to ask, has the Countdown 503 withdrawal, has that been stopped?
He can say yes to that.
He'll get another question.
Has the mining bed system, he can say yes to that, provide no details.
The second option is to say yes to both of those things.
We have a few
uh the third option is to say gentlemen our interest is that i don't want them listen the minute he says the mining address then that puts it to them on a safe basis that i don't think we need to do
We can get away to the circle and be the best.
Well, we can get away to the circle.
That is to be directed to say, that is to be directed to say, gentlemen, we are, I'm not going to comment on that.
I have no comment on that.
I'm not going to comment on it one way or the other.
I can only say that we are, that we consider it, for the present, it is the highest priority to get our prisoners back.
And obviously, the, the, the,
The continuation of our obligations under the agreement rests on that.
I love saying that.
Are there other obligations?
Are you allowed to read them?
Are you having to remove them?
Are you having to lay them?
I have no comment.
Of course you can lay them.
I've got a comment on that.
You can say, gentlemen, I first of all make the point to give you a few minutes back in place to discuss these matters.
The JMC and Secretary Rogers are doing it in Paris, creating that setting, and then say, I'm not going to comment on activities for lack thereof.
Yeah, see, I'm not going to comment on activities one way or another.
I have no comment that we are or are not doing anything except to say that our highest priority here is we are doing what we believe is necessary.
We will do it.
Can we say we are not interested in a public debate?
Yeah, that is, we're not interested in escalating the rhetoric on this.
We believe this is going to work out.
Why didn't you say that?
Why didn't you want him to say that?
No, not yet.
If anyone says that, Ron would say we cannot believe that Hanoi would jeopardize the relationship with us and what has been achieved.
Or he would say, gentlemen, it's not in the interest of either side.
to, to jeopardize this agreement, this peace agreement.
And, uh, circumstances be therefore, uh, are confident that this will be resolved.
All I'm just saying, that's it.
I don't want to imply that you're going to give anything.
That's the only thing.
We are confident that Hanoi will see.
That Hanoi will comply with the terms of the agreement regarding the ODS.
or you could start the other way around, to say there are a number of provisions of this agreement.
The highest priority as far as we're concerned is the return of our POWs.
If that falls, the delivery will fall.
And we are confident that an alliance
There's a story out of Saigon, which is probably true, that they are,
Uh, the North Vietnamese colonel has arrived today in Saigon, and you probably have the list.
I think there's nothing, I don't see that they have to yield before the end of March.
Well, they got one day.
Well, no, that's the end of February, but they have to yield.
I mean, the most they can delay is 30 days.
They know this is the one thing on which you can think over everything.
In American public opinion, you can bomb them again, you can put in mines again, you can send them back another six months.
Let me tell you, if the bombing goes again, Henry, I think we're talking about a long, long possibility that if they screw up this prisoner thing,
we'll find out where the god damn mercy camp is and then i really mean it's got to be if there's got to be no screwing around the dice everything else but that's it so tomorrow we have that they want that international conference to succeed there is no way we can sign that final document if our prisoners aren't coming back when is that going to be signed friday friday
so so they've picked a bad week all the treasures are against them the russians and chinese aren't going to let that come through you you don't think it'd be useful it's got to end there's just no way it cannot end
oh yeah they really reduced their demands all they've had for now is the present to be believed
It's that we put the security of their people at number one on the agenda.
Well, that's easy.
In the chamber scene.
In the chamber scene.
That's right.
You sent out a message indicating we would do something in the next collaboration.
I'll do that today.
I think it's that we, we will, we will, we will, we will, uh, we will also be responsible for having a collaboration.
Right.
Now, if I go out and say we, you know, I have a number of provisions, hot priorities.
We said yesterday POWs, that's what our objective is, to get the POWs back.
According to schedule, we're confident that Hanoi will comply because their interests would not be served.
We believe that.
We believe that.
We're confident.
We believe that.
Right.
Now, then they'll say today, out of the briefing, that the White House today showed some optimism and they don't think so.
Or I can say, is that all you think?
I wouldn't say anything yet.
No, no, no, no, no.
If he says this, my point is, if you want the story to be the way he means, Brown means, they may interpret the story as being a quite auspicious organism.
I wouldn't do that, yes.
Well then, then you better change the statement.
Okay.
Then I'm gonna say that I don't, I don't believe, I don't have strength to believe, strength to believe.
Uh, it is, just say there's not any interest.
Uh, you, you got mine?
Yes, sir.
Just take the last half of the sentence, strength to believe.
Okay.
Good.
It's just, if we keep this steam in the boiler, they're gonna say, they're already not peddling.
Yesterday they were talking about civilian prisoners, that's true.
And about season five of that, that's right.
Now, I'll also say you've heard we see people from the projects.
I've never said that.
Can we say that?
We have to.
We really have to.
It's a big thing, communication.
Yeah, very much.
We're in a very good report.
Yes, we're in very close contact with the Secretary of State.
Where is he?
If he gets us back, we'll be one for Iraq if this guy wants it.
Yes, sir.
He does.
You see, it might be with a low posture.
Because otherwise, every time we have any kind of a blip on this ceasefire, this and that, then you've got to go, are you comfortable or not comfortable?
And don't be concerned anything about the dissonance thing by the people that say, well, the agreement isn't working.
What's the matter with this?
Good God almighty, did anybody not expect this?
Mr. President, I think it will turn into an asset.
You'll face them down again.
And all the public will know is the president who was attracted to do something and it happened.
Now it happened, all these new details.
Then we'll put out after it's done.
We will put out that you ordered a stop of withdrawal, you ordered a stoppage of...
Beautiful, that's already sharp and sleek, this little leap of rockiness reduced to being an enigmatic itself.
And Congress, no one is going to take you on for a while.
This thing is going to get solved.
It's going to be another one of the indications that's in your challenge, you know, what you're doing.
It's at no basis for them to face a sound.
But it does show what real bastards they are.
It does show both sides.
I realize that.
It was a bastard.
Let's face it.
God damn him.
He was a bastard right up to the time this was signed.
He was tough and transgenic.
That's the way the market needs to stop.
All the enemies are.
And the way we handle them is to be tough as hell.
There is no other way.
They say they're Asians.
I agree that they say we're trans.
I think the way to do it is to be tough privately.
Very tough privately.
Publicly act as if we're not doing anything.
It impresses the world.
Exactly.
You agree with that?
Absolutely.
And you'll be fairly tough publicly, too.
Just not go into all the details.
Not be as tough publicly as you were privately.
Did you, in that connection, know what I was going to say about this little book that you were pressing?
I haven't realized it at the time.
But maybe you have written on this one.
I think that the greatest mistake of the Kennedy period
was the overblown rhetoric.
I mean, his rhetoric with regard to, uh, with regard to Berlin before the Walls.
I mean, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the degree of a say, uh, is not negotiable.
And the wall was built.
It said, this is a great defeat for the communists.
Yeah.
Oh, for Christ's sakes.
That was bullshit.
Total defeat.
Total defeat.
And then, of course, on the, uh, and then, and then making all the brave, bold statements, you know, about, uh, what we were going to do here, what we were going to do there.
And then, wham, back down.
His first meeting with Khrushchev.
Good.
Well, I can see Khrushchev must have trembled.
It must have, uh, it was totally unprepared for one thing.
You've never gone into a meeting where you didn't have some feel for what was going to happen.
They just shut off to Vienna without any idea of what Khrushchev was going to say.
They had no idea he was going to spring a Berlin ultimatum.
I mean, the Russians know if they sprung something on you that you weren't prepared for, I mean, that they hadn't warned you about, that'd be a goddamn risky course.
Second, he had no strategy at all.
He was sucking it up.
He sent Thompson.
running after troops of who wasn't true in it on a tour of South Korea to be able to permit him to deliver a letter.
You would never do that.
Well, another thing I read through this, too, was the way he sent bombing problems to Indonesia.
That was unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
If Kennedy had lived... And what he did to the Dutch on West Erie, Christ saves the Dutch there, the Indonesians didn't have any damn right to that, whatever.
If Kennedy had lived, there's no question
that Sukarno and the communists would have won in Indonesia.
Yeah, no question.
Because nobody was a back supporter.
No, and Kennedy had the intention of going to Indonesia early in 1964.
This would have given a tremendous boost to Sukarno.
The generals would have been discouraged.
Yeah.
It was close as it was.
It was close as it was, a little more.
Brazil would be left to death.
Yeah.
They were all out back in Kula.
Sure.
Well, another thing, Henry, all the way through, as I read in our meetings yesterday, the Security Council was a huge number of people that he had, and he discussed this with a great number of people.
And I think of that Cuban Missile Crisis, of course, we all, everybody said this is funny, he faced it down there.
that it should never have been allowed to happen.
And after he did it, the entire Turkish bases were separated.
It should never have been allowed to happen.
Basically, though, the Russians got a good quid pro quo.
They got rid of our bases in Turkey and Italy and returned for the bases in Cuba.
Now, that wasn't made public, but that was a clear quid pro quo that Bobby Kennedy, he's written about it, arranged with Sabrina.
And Jack Kennedy's nerves were snapping at the end of that question.
He just never had what you've done.
You've always made the decision, do I go or don't I go?
Once you go, you go mad.
You don't look back, you don't hedge it in 5,000 different ways.
You know the way it takes.
Of course, I think you're never a legalist, but Henry, the way he handled his missiles, do you think that's granted?
Now, you must be furious.
They must all be dying, because you see, the way they ran, sending only half the strike of D-26s, and they're going to have taken out the air force.
That could have made the difference.
And then, of course, in order to have that covered, and then withdrawing, I mean, back and forth, back and forth.
Jesus Christ Almighty, no wonder that they did.
Then moving the landing side.
Then moving it, moving the landing site at first, they had an earlier time, which ruined it, and the Joint Chiefs said it wasn't worth it.
And moving it along the ground, that maybe it wouldn't be considered internationally as much of a, shall we say, an American operation.
It's the fact that if you had done it, you would hardly have done it with sufficient force.
to make it work or you wouldn't have done it at all the interesting thing is
Did you notice that?
I didn't know that.
He went up.
After the main page, he went up.
He had an un... Well, another point that fairly makes so well is here, talk about going to the...
I've read it from cover to cover.
Oh, yeah.
Here's Kennedy talking about going to the moon as if it were...
an apocalyptic event.
Never let it say, we're going to do this.
No, it's the America, the dream, and always with exalted language.
Well, I suppose we don't have enough of each other's lives.
That's what people say.
I think, Mr. President, you are in good public shape right now.
We have better company.
I'll get this little book here when I finish.
It's only about 100 pages long.
I used to get dozens of letters a week of which 80% were against you.
Now I get every letter I get is favorable for you.
Well, you'll get it too now, I think, Mr. President.
Well, I don't think so.
You know, I'll tell you what is happening here, sir.
You know, it's, you know, Henry, two things.
The war critics first have a vested interest in proving that they were right, so they would want this to fail.
The other point is, though, they cannot live without a crisis.
And unless they're able to ditch, since they are so negative, they've lost so much faith in themselves.
With this out of the way, they're praying, flailing around.
How do you think?
That's the trouble with the great, the rest of them.
They're not happy.
Don't you agree they're more unhappy now than they've ever been?
Oh, no question.
Or am I wrong?
Absolutely.
Now, maybe, maybe, maybe.
But George Bundy is not, I don't know.
But George Bundy is an opportunity.
He's in a different category.
Yeah, but George Bundy would love it.
to be Secretary of State.
He's never going to make it.
Well, not for a while.
Well, I don't see who is going to make him Secretary of State.
Oh, he's courageously a candidate.
Really?
Well, he is, but don't forget that Johnson sent him to give Bobby Kennedy the word that he wasn't going to be Vice President.
So that's it.
Many of us have never forgiven him.
And, uh,
And I don't think he should have done that.
That wasn't his job.
That wasn't his job.
That wasn't his job.
And he was so close.
But the other point is, the other point is, aren't we...
Aren't we seeing here a very interesting reaction of some of our media friends who find out that we are kind of a trap?
I don't mean that we should be too obsessed with it now and then arresting comes in with a more balanced beat.
And also, we've got to realize that criticism is the...
it's the attitude from mitchell sunday we're occasionally nagging at kennedy but basically
It was a favor for Christ.
They were writing nice human interest stories about him.
Uncle, which overrode all the rest.
Which overrode a lot of the other.
They were always giving it a little twist in his favor.
And even when he had the bay of eggs, how he was so worried about it.
It was led by poor old Eisenhower.
Christ, as Eisenhower said, any second lieutenant had ever commanded a boat, no one would not have failed the bay of eggs.
That's right.
I talked to a lieutenant in his room about it.
He said, what would you do?
I said, I'd go in.
I can't do that now.
That's not the end of it.
Why are you still here?
Now, Kennedy was the first of all the...
But I think, too, though a lot of it was his advisors, I looked at them, and what I think here is that they were so crazed by publicity, public relations.
Kennedy was poll crazy.
I mean, all the rest.
Counselors, too.
You cannot follow the polls.
But Kennedy was indecisive also, Mr. President.
Why indecisive?
Well, that's what happened to me.
That's what happened to me.
That's what happened.
He had no real choice, Mr. President, to begin with.
Kennedy, because if Soviet missile bases had existed in Cuba, Goldwater could have beaten him in 1964.
I mean, he couldn't have stood for re-election.
Right.
And also, they would have lost the House of Senate that year.
And they would have lost the House of Senate.
And that's just when we were ready.
And we were ready to help a lot out of the issue.
And then, wham!
Because if there had been missile phases in Cuba, he would then have lost the next negotiation over Cuba, and he would have been dead.
It would have been one disaster after another.
So it's no great achievement.
You had a choice on May 8th.
All your incentives were the other way, and you went the right way.
He had no choice.
He had to go the way he did.
Then, by playing...
He had to be deliberately, deliberately set, waiting two weeks to make it just before the election.
You probably, probably, I'm not even so sure you would have made it quite so hysterical a confrontation.
Of course not.
Why do you go on and scare all the American people to death?
Never, never, never, never.
We're looking down their throats.
They get the hell out.
Get out.
We're going to stop them.
We have the police there.
Now what the hell are they going to do?
He had every school child scared to death.
I don't want to die.
You can't scare people like that.
You know, they say our Cambodian speech scared people.
My God, that was mild compared to what Kennedy would have done.
I talked about Cambodia.
I talked down the back of other powers.
Your rhetoric, your most high-blown rhetoric in crisis was never as bad
or as exalted as his rhetoric was on a day-to-day basis and again in that fairly book he has all the speeches he gave in the week before he was assassinated and there was no crisis there was nothing going on and he gets all this exalted of course he uh history preserved him if he had if he had survived by 65 he would have been in worse shape than johnson was because people were just getting tired
when he, uh, when he got into school.
He, it was hard to get tired of it because Henry, he had, he had a clan in the press.
You have to realize the new signing, Carol Evans, uh, at one point, Joel's son, uh, and of course, uh, Walter Bronte, they, the TV people just moved over and that clan was powerful.
That's true, but still with no achievement.
I think the public would have gotten hurt.
Now, that's our discipline.
Friends, I say friends, but they give us hell too, and I object to it.
I don't believe in a pandering crisis.
I don't believe in it.
But I do believe, I just do believe in a single standard.
I believe in a fair question.
We haven't had that.
That should be what it is.
Christ told us we're wrong.
But also, is that the problem?
Is that it?
Yeah.
Califano was yesterday at a dinner that Rabin gave for
Mrs. Mayor, and I have never gone to the Israeli embassy, but when Roger had a pull-out because of being in the conference.
Sure, sure.
Well, no, as a matter of principle, I have.
But when he was out, he said it wouldn't make a bad impression if our colleague Vano was there.
And I said, you know, it really makes me, I said it makes me sick when I see the liberals.
He said, he said, the Democrats think they've got us now, they hate to be in now.
I said, well, you fellows made it impossible for us to conduct a war, so you may make it impossible for us to conduct a peace.
But I think it's a disgrace.
We don't justify this on human grounds, but you are the people who were pleading for humanity.
How can you do this?
Kalifana said we were pleading for humanity.
We wanted to have people not go into Vietnam anymore.
It was a draft issue, and you had it killed anyway.
Cynical.
Joe, sir.
Kelly Bonner is a pretty good guy, basically.
Do you think he's going to be a good guy?
Where is the character in this country?
You don't have anyone like Russell.
Where is the character in this country?
Where is the character?
Well, I think the younger people actually are getting sick and tired of... You think so?
Oh, yeah, I think they're adding a little bit.
I just have the impression that only campus is now... the major problem we have is with the faculty, not with the students.
The students respect you for having done what you did.
I'd be interested to see a poll between you and Teddy Kennedy on the campuses.
I wonder whether we can do that.
Well, it'd be surprising.
It doesn't make any difference anymore to us.
No, but I would bet that you would come up with it.
Well, it will be better.
It's heavy thinking about it.
I mean, it's actually reading that book.
It's a suggestion between us.
It's about as far as it should go.
We've got to make it.
We'll have a promise.
Congressional elections, other kinds of people, and so forth and so on.
Then you've got to think of what happens afterwards.
We cannot allow Teddy Kennedy to be president.
I think we can't allow him.
You agree?
Totally.
I think we can't allow him.
No, totally.
And you can't allow Muskie.
He may not remember, but Muskie isn't nothing.
He's a peddle-ass head of the stupid Humphreys.
Got to buy the Humphreys.
Now let's look at our own shot, though.
It's plummeting.
The more I see of that, the less I think of it.
Really?
Yeah.
U.H.
Singh in December was right.
He would have botched up that trip to Saigon.
Thank God we didn't, sir.
No, but U.H.
Singh was right.
I thought he could be broken, but he's a selfish man.
Every problem I've ever taken up...
He's small.
Yeah.
We can't even...
Now that doesn't leave a hell of a lot.
You know, the only one who really leaves.
We have to face this vital president of Rockefeller.
And Rockefeller...
what do you think
Yes, I know.
That's what I call a great old-golly people.
Gold is much mayer 75, but still it's a hell of a pace.
Of the ones I know, Rockefeller has the best qualifications.
I must say, I'm afraid Conley, if he doesn't watch himself, may kill himself in his financial operation.
I agree.
Uh-huh.
And he's really using your name in a rude way.
He should not be involved with a hammer, for example.
Hammers are slits, frankly.
You know, kind of... And he shouldn't use your name the way he is because I'm a great text audio radio.
He used a letter of introduction by you.
Come in.
Like...
Sir, just before I go on, there is one question that occurs to me.
Sure.
Have we received official word from the North Vietnamese about the, uh, about the prisoner?
No, we really haven't.
No, no.
Okay.
We have had no official, no government's done anything.
We have not.
Have we had a communication with them?
Well, we've had a consultation.
Did we have a, uh, have you received any response?
Not yet.
Right?
They're still in contact.
We're still in contact.
No.
Oh, I would say, yes, we're still in contact.
We're still, I would put it this way.
Gentlemen, we're still in contact.
We don't discuss the contacts we have.
I think it's better to be enigmatic about that.
I'm not going to discuss the contacts.
We are in contact.
I'm not going to discuss the substance of the contacts.
How's that?
Now, when I say no to doing this government, I don't want you to.
that they were refusing to turn over the president
I don't believe.
I would simply leave it more enigmatic.
My view is to say, don't worry.
Contact the minority in the nation.
I'm not going to discuss the substance of those comments.
Just let it right out there.
Well, what do you use all the time?