On March 12, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, Stephen B. Bull, Col. Robinson Risner, and Manolo Sanchez met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:08 pm to 4:34 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 876-011 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Colonel Robinson right here.
Colonel, how are you?
Welcome.
That's you.
Why don't we have a flag?
And one hour sitting down.
Thank you.
But you're the prime minister of the president.
I always tell people when they get out of the office, I would ask them to shut up.
Take a seat.
Well, we have, of course, I guess...
We have coffee, we have tea, ice tea, ice coffee, coke and cola.
I'll have ice tea with pineapple.
Yes, sir.
Would you like some?
Ice tea, please.
I know.
Yes, sir.
Do you recognize?
Yes, sir.
Please, sir.
Yes, sir.
Thank you, sir.
I'm staying.
I'm staying.
I'm staying.
But you can be sure that you don't see how you hold it.
I just don't know.
And the more I think about it, I think probably it had to do with a lot of characters.
It also had to do with leadership.
Why didn't you do it?
You were there how many years?
Seven and a half, sorry, I'm going to shut it down.
16 September 1965.
How many missions have you followed?
And you got some things there, too.
No, they weren't flying.
They had not met us yet, although they did come to Vanuatu when we first hit the Emerald Bridge on the 3rd or 4th of April.
They came down and came out of the haze and got to the Emerald Bridge.
That was the only encounter of that option.
Were you shocked by...
Yes, sir.
I'm going to get out.
So when I lost him, he was in trouble.
I mean, he got out okay.
No, no one saved him.
He was not shot down.
Oh, what do you mean?
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
That was my son, of course.
That was your son.
Yes, sir, of course.
Yeah, yeah.
The, uh, when you were, uh, when you were there, how many were there first?
It was their procedure to keep us isolated, or keep us in a cell, we call it a cell, a solitary confinement.
And they followed this procedure until Toronto.
The early part, January, February of 67.
They had not been able to make the gains they thought they should have.
In other words, in our minds and thoughts and our actions.
So they tried something new.
They gained most everyone.
Our roommate was normally the youngest, most inexperienced man they could find to give to the old dads, as we call ourselves.
And after a short period of trial, this didn't work either, so we lost them.
So I spent about 54 months by myself, and a little over two years isolated from the other men.
By 54 months?
Yes, sir.
We would leave our door and walk to the, we called it the bath stall, or bath house, or bath area, where we had water trunks made from, you know, those big cement tubs.
And some of the time we'd grow our water from the ground, and we didn't see very much except part of our children, but at least our perspective was
This is what we saw.
We had no windows.
And the vents were either under the floor or near the 15-foot ceiling.
They tried to make you evaporate, Dr. O'Neill.
Yes, sir.
One thing they did, they steered shy out of us.
They were talking to you about this?
Oh, they were talking to the doctor.
Although they did their level best to change our thinking, their way of doing it was to point out every ill of our society in every way that they could.
How would they do that through radio, written material, or in English?
Yes, written material, always in English.
In written material, we have a speaker in every cell.
And they had a camp radio.
They had tape recorders.
And they would make these programs up.
They would read or force an American to read on this tape.
And they would play it to us.
And we got under these garbages.
Oh, isn't it random?
It's as much as four to five cars a day.
Sometimes it was four to five hours.
They would also intersperse it with some American music to try to get you to listen.
And then they would, they would play up videos of American society in a lot, uh, showing their own society in the most favorable light.
They would turn out a numerical, uh, they called it, in these studies, things of this sort, that, uh, showed how much they were accomplishing for their people.
And compared to South Vietnam, who were suffering under the dictatorship, so for Europe.
So, we got an undiluted,
And we also heard voices, if not twice a day.
And that was really under the gardens.
They were piping it.
Piping it.
Now, when you go down to the washroom, were you able to see others?
No.
No, sir.
They would not.
You never saw anybody?
Oh, no, sir.
They just converted through the cracks and holes.
But we did have good communications.
Oh, you knew them all, sir?
Oh, yes, sir.
How did you know them?
Well, everything that moved...
Everything that made a sound would be used.
We whistled in Morse code until we stopped all the sounds.
And then we went through the walls.
There was a code running by Captain Smitty Harris that we called Tango.
We used many derivatives of this to make our own codes, but this was just the sound of attacking it.
We also used the brooms we used in the courtyard to talk.
We used the coats.
Anytime we were washing our clothes, in other words, if I wanted to spell out my initials, I would give four meditation and three more, and I would repeat it as RR.
Anything that made a sound.
When we were exercising, our feet, slacking down, we'd slap one foot down harder than the other to spell out what it was.
We'd wiggle our ears.
We were in eye contact with another person, PW, though separated by the heart.
We could either use our eyes or our ears or our toes or our fingers.
We had a one-handed mute code, a two-handed mute code.
We used some for everything that would make a sound.
We had different needs.
We could talk through a two-foot wall with a cup.
In other words, by positioning a cup and positioning another on the opposite side of it and putting it to your ear, you can actually talk through this two feet of brick mortar so that you can understand it on it.
So if you were an old loser... Any time we had a common wall, it was very easy.
We were in constant contact.
But when we had separation, then we had to go...
walls, and we had all kinds of ways, sticks, and we had a pipe through the ceiling of M.O.
We could take a stick and run it up through there and make a cigarette and we could talk this way.
And they would cough for answering and so on.
So they were never able to operate communications.
Perhaps communication was one of the things that gave us, that prevented the enemies from actually breaking us by keeping us divided.
In other words, they were never able to keep us separated as long as we could contact one another.
Sure.
How many would you figure were in it?
You, of course, were moved.
I was only moved twice, sir.
They moved me.
No, sir.
No.
Those were a great bunch of guys.
You can't imagine how high they were.
But I approved that thing.
Oh, boy, what a bunch they were.
They pounded on things and shot the place up.
There's a chance they were barely gone.
Yes, I think it was two months ago.
That guy said someday he heard some of you.
You ought to meet him.
We want to very much.
I understand.
We were at that time.
You never heard about Sunday.
Yes, sir.
We had, I don't know if you've been well briefed on,
They had brought all the prisoners together at that prison, Wallow, which is a big central prison in Hanoi.
That's the one that is about as famous as Devil's Island, or what's it called?
The one that's called Hilton?
Hilton, yes, sir.
That's Wallow, and there
first we didn't know.
We thought that later it was because they were afraid that there would be more of them.
We called it a figure-out attempt.
In other words, when they came in, because we called that the grab, this is our terminology for it, and we believed that it would be for them.
We were scared that there were going to be more of these.
So they put everyone into a central location and brought in all the camps.
So for the first time, we were all together.
And then you started to have the, the, the roommate or before the 34 months?
Before the 34 months, yeah.
In 1967, in February, I got a young, kind of dessert man.
I kept him for four months.
And then, and just, I won't get into any of the details, but they wanted me to meet a delegation, as they call it.
In other words, any visitors.
And I refused.
And they wanted to use my pictures.
I had two pictures of my wife and son.
I battered them very highly.
They wanted to use me.
They let that through?
They let that through.
And keep me in the letter.
Well, in the time I was there, I had two letters a year.
And so when I did come through for them, I was 42 weeks
Yes, sir.
Yes, I was in the interrogation room, and the captain, that's his code name, was a supervisor over all the prisoners.
He was running the show, and he was very unhappy because I had, quote, caused him to lose face in front of him.
And I tore them up, destroyed them.
And so they put me on the floor, and they used nylon straps on the pair sheets that they had picked out.
And they broke your arms together by half, and they laid you on your side in two guards, and they broke your arms, and they broke your shoulders, and they placed you together behind.
And they stitched up across your feet in front of you, and they put a strap over your right
And then they did you over, we call it feeding your toes to you, and put your feet in your mouth, and then they jumped on your back with their knees, meanwhile pulling on the slack, until you were like a pretzel.
And they laid you this way until you screamed sufficiently, a length of time to satisfy the requirement.
They were somewhat angry.
Normally, they're trying to get information or get you to do something, like meet a delegation or write a statement or whatever they want at that particular time.
But this time, they were angry, so they didn't let me up for a while, and I suffered for a while, and I screamed.
I did all that required until they came back.
Then they asked me again where the pictures were, and I told them I'd destroyed them, so I went through the same routine again.
I wasn't hurt badly, except...
They injured my back again and my hip joints.
They had pulled my right shoulder outside before.
And they just mashed my nose and cut my head.
The guards were unnecessarily rough.
And then after the second time, I told them my letters.
The bar is here so that when the weight is permitted, every time you move it, it slides down.
for a while, for most of the night.
They were just angry.
In other words, they hadn't gotten what they were after, so then they put me in two late stops with both legs and small ankles and stomachs in a sitting position on a bunk with my hands twisted behind me and a handful of handcuffs biting into the bottom of my flesh.
I was there ten days and nights.
The 54 months that you were there, I had contacts during that time, sir, that I was never with.
I never lived with them.
What did you do, though?
Did you have any reader information?
Did you have any writing there?
You know, sir, we had no writing materials.
Yeah.
Unless they brought you a Pina Dorada for statement or something.
We had no writing materials.
We had no reading material except for pure propaganda.
Most of it was atrocity stories.
And because... What did you read?
We actually would look at it, and we'd just weed it out.
In other words, if there was anything interesting in it, we'd retain it.
But then they became fearful that we were not being, so then they would take the atrocity material, maybe read it out loud from an English speaker, to make sure that I had the right to read it out loud.
After that, about 1970, they finally realized, I think, for the first time, or last fully, all of their efforts to manipulate the thing, they were just flocking in.
And quote, make better citizens out of us.
You think they did?
If I'm positive, they felt this.
Well, then when you joined together with the others, that was perhaps a year.
That was the... Why did you have to be together with people?
I received a really
and they said, and this, of course, was only an example of their thinking, and I'm sure that they were exaggerating, but they said, there's only two people who would rather have cancer, and that's his.
And they used the names Johnson and Rusk.
Ha!
Yeah.
And they said, these people know all about you.
In other words, all the publicity.
And they thought you were going to break.
Yes, that's right.
any state that they could get from me.
Because they used me against the other prisoners as well as propaganda.
How did they do that?
Well, they would...
They'd say, look, Reisner's reading on the radio for us.
So if he does it, it's okay.
Of course, the other prisoners knew I was being tortured because I had communication with them occasionally.
Oh, I see.
No one bought off on that.
Sure.
Of course, we were like that.
What was the...
In that period, what did you do to keep going?
I mean, you know, that's what the Spirit is.
What are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
Serve faith in God.
And faith in...
I don't make these things easily, but faith in God.
Faith in our country, I mean our government.
And the American people and my family.
All these things are mine.
I couldn't.
There wasn't anything else I could do except draw.
They broke my nerves in 1967.
I made kidney stones twice.
Traditional?
Yes.
I'd gone about two, three weeks on kidney stones.
I wasn't getting that good attention, of course.
But I was somewhat beaten before I could meet the German filth.
Then they fixed me for ten days.
This was about the first of August.
They ordered a ball.
Yes.
Yes.
The day after Christmas, they moved me into it.
Now it's 69.
The day after Christmas, 69, they moved me into it.
Yes, sir.
That's when they drew all the prisoners together, and I know he helped them.
Most everyone is now together together.
I was in
Did they bring their clothes?
Did they bring their clothes?
Yes, sir.
We had to wear pajamas.
You know, the tights that they wear in South Vietnam.
And you washed them yourself?
We washed them ourselves.
We also had to be shaved either once or twice a week according to the camp.
They gave us razor blades.
The blades weren't very good because they resharpened them.
But, oh, we made them.
They shaved them, the safety razors, twice a week.
And you used cold water?
Cold water, uh...
We had lye soap, big bars of lye soap.
We normally had soap.
They also withdrew soap, toilet paper.
We also had toothbrush and toothpaste, unless we were punished.
But they would withdraw all those things for us from certain periods of time, I'm sure.
When I first arrived over there, they were not torturing us.
I mean, nobody was giving them anything.
I didn't have to say anything for the first ten weeks.
Then they put me in stocks for the 31st of October and the 2nd of December.
After that, they still, uh, I was doing good.
So, you know, they started torturing me.
And with the ropes, they got what they wanted from us.
But they had not been torturing up until, uh, a long time ago.
It was normally either pumpkin soup, cabbage soup, turnip soup, and a small portion on another dish.
This was after 67.
During 65 and 66, it was very uncertain.
Sometimes you'd see the bottom of your bowl.
There would not be anything in your soup.
There was one bowl of French bread, but this long, this big around.
That's what we ate twice a day during 65.
But it ain't the same.
three or four, let's say, three bites per meal for the family.
That's our meat.
We also occasionally got some fish.
Or fish meal.
We would grind bones and everything.
The whole fish was ground and cooked meal.
And we couldn't eat the meal.
Did they ever, during the time you were there, did you ever see, did they ever give any, any output there for meat wine?
Yes, sir, on their holidays.
I believe it was on New Year or their 10th.
Probably not your first one.
Every year.
Almost every year on their 10th, their Independence Day, and even on Christmas.
We would get some basket of beer.
I had to maybe get a couple of beers.
hard rock.
But I mean, it's a relief.
Yes, they must have been wonderful.
The guys enjoyed it very much.
They sure did.
You asked what I did during this prison time.
I worked with mathematical problems.
I don't know in my mind.
Also, out of an undersell, there was a soft brick, and I could get pieces of brick to work on.
Oh.
My little roommate renewed me on, or brought me up to date on some math also, and so I worked math.
I tried to do work on some of this, but working problems and exercise took a great deal of my time.
I exercised.
My nerves went.
I was exercising 16, 18 hours a day.
It was the funniest exercise.
Is it just exercise?
Like what?
Sitting up?
Running, sit-ups, push-ups.
Like 500 push-ups.
No, that was awesome.
Well, you know, uh, let me ask you, uh, briefly about your personal plans.
What is your age?
I'm 48 years old.
That was the year I was 48 when I lost my presence the first time.
And then I tried at the beginning, because actually I was 47 here, and I was 48 in January of 1960.
Good.
We've got a lot of good years ahead.
A lot of good years.
No, I feel very young, sir.
I'm feeling in excellent shape.
I am, too.
Go to your studio.
We all preferred the bread because it stuck with us longer.
If you could get it, you could eat all you could hold of rice.
You'd be hungry again before the next meal because there was so much water.
But even though it has two problems.
The Germans told us that our teeth were better than our contemporaries who had been out here in America when we'd been gone because of our diet.
No sugar.
And we also were extremely conscientious.
We brushed within a minute after we finished eating almost.
And we never failed to brush.
We ate.
How many did you ever watch?
They took everything.
Well, these guns, they bend these guns, and they strike, and also it builds downtown Hanoi.
So we learned to teletype this way.
Do you have any other plans?
Yes, sir.
I'm going to stay in the service, or I, unless something changes my plans, I plan to ask for a fight with the fighter.
Yes, sir.
You're still waiting for him?
Yes, sir.
I should.
I just want to fight him.
Why?
Yes, sir.
On their holidays, I believe it was New Year, or their 10th.
Probably not your birthday.
Every year.
Almost every year on their 10th, their Independence Day, and even on Christmas, we would get some basket of beer.
I had to maybe get a couple of beers.
Hard rock.
That's right.
But I mean, it's a relief.
Oh, yes.
They must have been wonderful.
The guys enjoyed it very much.
They sure did.
You asked what I did during this prison time.
I worked mathematical problems.
I don't know.
In my mind.
Also, out of the windowsill, there was a soft brick, and I could get pieces of brick to work on the floor over the end.
Oh.
My little roommate redoed me on, or brought me up to date on some math also, and so I worked math.
I tried to do work on some of this, but working problems and exercise took a great deal of my time.
I exercised.
My nerves went.
I was exercising 16, 18 hours a day.
It was the funniest exercise.
Is it just exercise?
Like what?
Sitting up.
Running.
Sit-ups.
Push-ups.
Like 500 push-ups.
No, that was awesome.
Well, you know, let me ask you briefly about your personal plans.
What is your age?
I'm 28 years old.
28 years old.
That was the, I was 48 when I lost my presence the first time.
And then I tried at the beginning, but actually I was 47 here, and I was 48 the next, in January of 1960.
Good.
We've got a lot of good years ahead.
A lot of good years.
No, I feel very young, sir.
I'm feeling in excellent shape.
I am, too.
And I said, on the other hand, he said, well, as a matter of fact, he had hired Ben Samson to be Jewish.
He was Russian.
In fact, Ben Samson was always.
What happened to Ben Samson?
He said, he said, he said, they were better because they were on such an austere diet.
And yet, you know,
rice instead of bread for about 11 months, but otherwise we had bread with our meals.
But there were many little rocks.
We all preferred the bread because it stuck with us longer.
If you could get it, you could eat all you could hold of rice.
You'd be hungry again before the next meal because there was so much water.
But even though it has two problems.
The demons told us that our teeth were better than our contemporaries who had been out here in America when we'd been gone because of our diet.
No sugar.
And we also were extremely conscientious.
We crushed within a minute after we finished eating all of us.
Well, these guns, they hit these guns, and they strike, and also it bails down, down, down.
So we learned to teletype this way.
Are there plans?
Yes, sir, I'm going to stay in service, or I, unless something changes my plans, I plan to ask for a fight with the fighter.
Yes, sir.
You're still waiting for him?
Yes, sir, I should be.
This one's the better one.
Is there?
Yes.
Yes.
So you'd like to get away?
Either that or something.
Yes, sir.
What was your deal with about...
Yes, sir.
You've been here before, haven't you?
Yes, sir.
This is the... That's the mark of this...
The office was built Peter Rosenholzer.
seals on the ceiling and on the floor.
See, that's the way.
And of course, they don't need flags.
Those flags, they don't even have the president or whatever takes with him.
Every president gets a set of flags.
Always that guy, he takes those with him, and then of course, a new set comes in like there's one each one of the presidential libraries.
On the, on your situation, on
Tell me a little bit about your family.
How was the service to her?
She was kind of unique.
People had prepared for her.
More detailed than I ever imagined.
The services.
The services.
And they even tried to prepare her.
Oh, sir.
It's so outstanding.
Everything.
The nurses, the doctors, everyone.
I can call the base, there is pain.
Did you ever see, when you were there, did you ever see a nurse or in seven and a half years, did you see any women at all?
No, they had three girls work in the kitchen, which we only saw cases.
They would carry water or food, but three men at least.
Okay.
Okay.
Yes, you're right.
And survived the ordeal.
Yes, sir.
She is more tired than I am.
She never lost faith that day.
He stepped on it.
I'm proud to say he stepped it together.
But you're right.
But you have children.
I have boys.
You have a boy.
They're all boys.
All boys.
To me, the country, of course, was all in great debt, but I'm sure Stanford can respond to that.
But also, primarily for what you have done for the spirit of the country,
America is quite a different country from what it was when we left in the 1960s.
The 60s, of course, were a time when the Revolutionary Forces were beginning to evolve.
But there was still, up through about 1967, there was still a decent...
Not just, uh, the media that we're on, uh, we're talking on the radio.
There's people, people with a few exceptions like that.
It was, uh, I don't know what to say, but Tulsa paper stood out, and a few others.
There's a little bit of all of us that have gone into this area.
Anyway, uh, it was, uh, it, it, uh, we have a message here.
But others were, many of them became Quaker.
that is irrelevant to what they were doing was, among the so-called better people in this country, the university and college professors, and our students, the media, the men in the business community, I'm sure you saw them, the, what you found was that
just, frankly, the loss of faith in not just what we were doing in Vietnam, but in the country in general, in other words, whether this country ought to play a real role, whether America really might better be advised to address some of the issues of the last campaign and come home and concentrate only on its problems here and put our money in the gallows and other places.
And that is a very, very prevalent one.
I'm sure your wife is told you about it because she was told you and she had to do it.
And that's going to be a problem.
I don't want to suggest that today the majority of Americans feel that way.
I do say that this is really the reason why we have to see this be true.
I do say that the way that the war was ended, although it took four years, the way that the war was ended was, and it was
not simply from the standpoint of the failures that we've been itself given means, or what happened to America's credibility with our allies and our enemies, but even more, it was important to the spirit of America itself, because had we in effect, let's face it, bugged out to get you back, which we couldn't have done, and they wouldn't have made that deal, they would have said, bug out of the world.
But nevertheless, even if we had,
The frustration that would have had the recrimination that would have rolled up $40,000 debt and all that in a while, I think would have been almost too much for anybody to resist in the leadership.
and what we think is about as responsible a way as we can achieve without, and we, uh, anonymize the place, and we've done that, we've probably played the role for others, uh, but very rewarding, and, uh, in this way, uh, was one thing.
But what the country needed to see was you and, uh, the other policy.
that ironically is
is your first exposure, you were in college, you went to the press and tried to do it, and they put all these words in your mouth.
And I saw some of these guys, I was at UC the other day, I couldn't put them on my phone, so I was like, if you said, well, you couldn't break much at all for seven years, the Air Force could have done it for you.
And of course not.
But the point is that...
here you are, you can come back.
You've had a great emotional impact on the country.
It's good for the country.
The American people don't want to be a defeated people.
They don't want to be an ashamed people.
They want to be proud of the black.
They want to be proud of their man.
They want to make their role.
It is worth following them wherever they are.
They want to make their sons have died in a good cause.
Now, so...
So, it's ironic that the prisoners knew that people like us would come back.
In effect, got a message home, rather than a speech.
So, here you are, an enormous asset to the country, an enormous asset to the country.
I think that you will find, of course, that everybody will want to support you.
And, of course, you have to assume that a lot of our friends and we will want to discredit you.
And they have to.
And I think also you've got to figure that...
On the other hand, your goal now is a very important one.
I don't know that, but I do mean that having gone through all this suffering, it must have been for a purpose.
I mean, those of us, each of us has, it's not a religious thing, have got to believe that we believe in any kind of divine plan for the world, for ourselves.
We've got to believe that we suffer for a cause.
And in this case, I think you've also gone through this for the purpose of perhaps strengthening the anarchic spirit, to reinstall the character in our people.
It is not right.
I guess what I'm saying here is that the fact that all of you survived has a dramatic effect on our experience.
Now, what we have to do is to continue
Uh, I would say this, that you will tend to get quite discouraged at times due to the fact that we're doing business.
Because, as I feel, we exactly are as a program.
We're doing the practice.
But it's a matter of these guys.
They realize that this is a horrible war, and they're not just assassins.
And, uh, some will be disappointed when they return after the first one.
There will be always some disappointment.
I mean, coming home to the plus and the crown is much easier than living life.
It's a day-to-day thing, as we all know, whether it's from the man or from the rest.
But you, the leaders, I mean, I hope that you all keep together with your colleagues and your guys and the rest.
I'm talking about recognizing that any of that is a fault.
for the purpose of discrediting all of these.
So I don't mean to give you a wooly picture of what we have, because I can assure you, not to be an accomplice bar, it's important to me to continue to have this country play a great role in the world.
some of these thoughts must be
I've been walking through your heart, and you came back.
I was a part of it.
The young people are good people.
Thank you.
our values, we found that we had given absurdness to some things that were most important.
And we found, for instance, that we had long skirted the subjects of God and patriotism, two words that people tend to avoid in their conversations, in normal everyday conversation.
We learned that
These were not bad terms.
These were terms to be cultivated, to be talked about and thought about.
We've learned not to be ashamed of them so that we can talk about God to anybody.
We're no longer ashamed of God or what God can do for us.
We also have learned that patriotism is something our country needs, and without it, we're lost.
That freedom is worth fighting for, is worth dying for, and that the 40,000 men that lost their lives didn't do it in vain.
We're doing it not only for the United States of America, but for those people who are
or who we stand, those people who can't stand without our help, that the money, the aid, and so forth that we are giving to the various countries around the world are necessary to prevent them from falling into communism.
But in general, I don't talk very long, but I do say that God and patriotism and the flag is something good and nice.
It's not something to ridicule or talk about.
Sir, I had been, I mean, I had brought a letter with me from a counselor at a high school.
You know, it's a wonderful letter, and she says, Sir, I certainly think you would love her to see it.
She said, I think, first of all, she said something very nice about it.
But in the past, we've had trouble keeping the children quiet enough so they can hear the speakers.
And I must say, they were absolutely quiet.
There was no sound.
It was the type of audience that you get very seldom.
And I can say that.
But I had three standing ovations, and they kept bringing me back, and they wanted me to say something else.
And then they flooded the stage, and I was there for another 30 minutes shaking hands.
And school kids were crying and shaking my hand.
There was one college here just before I came here, at Nazarene College in Oklahoma.
About 30 years.
You see, the Nash Marines are what I call fundamentalists.
They would still have some beliefs.
Yes, they were wonderful.
I suspect this was only in the class of 2000, I think.
Let me tell you a couple of things about the
We want to have about the reception .
We think we're planning on having approximately 60 days after the last of our homes.
So we're talking about May 28th.
We haven't talked about June 14th.
That's too late.
We want to move up.
And I think you have talked about June 14th.
So we're in the ballpark of the 24th and the 28th of that period.
Probably just before Memorial Day.
I think we're probably, we will get the word out in a way that we're going to have it.
And what we'll do, so everybody will know.
And I think it's probably a good idea that that should be the first major thing that all of you should participate in.
Now you should do other things if you want.
What we're planning is that we'd like to have
But we're going to have the, each man his wife, or his mother, his wife, he has a wife, or his, you know, you know, kind of, we'll just see what we're going to have.
We'd like to have, well, we have, I don't know if we need to worry about this, but we might, but we might be useful if we give births and come in and give the men and their wives a breathing on action.
And then come to the White House for a reception.
Then in the evening, we would go out.
We've got a tent out on the lawn.
It would be pretty to live in here.
And down at the hangar, I think, there's basically a White House dinner.
It would be a lot of fun.
Or there's going to be six of us.
And then for entertainment, we'll have a good show.
That's not going to be easy.
Just make it easy.
Yeah, sounds good.
We'd like to do more.
In fact, I was hoping that we would like to put it at the time that everyone sees 100.
So you see the 3,500, 400, whatever it is, the times two, 800, whatever it is.
But you'll get a good show up there.
So you can relax.
We might even, I mean, thinking of getting Bob Holt to come in and see, did all the Vietnam shows over the years, every Christmas, and never the other.
And we would not just have his show, but we might get him a little less around, and then some Hollywood people there.
But just for you.
Not just for the guys.
That's not the right thing to do.
How about the National Security Review?
Would you like to have that?
We put that on the State Department of Detroit with your wives.
security problem they are a part of us sure and you all have had to deal with the virus in our absence many cases they've done a fine job of the intelligence department so sure i think this will do two things that will make them feel more of a part of the whole establishment and they really are and two it will uh if there are any uh weakness on their part as far as maintaining the security that we should i think
Let me ask you about a couple of points.
I was reading my news today, two things were concerning.
I want your advice on it.
Let me say it as far as you're going to give it to me and it goes on forever.
First point is that I've seen something to the effect that some of the models are pretty teed off.
And a few that, you know, they've got that 80 ton that they love, it's not up in standards.
And they, after the 60, after they were all formed, they would get, they would proceed to bring that out.
My own guess is that's probably a good idea.
I don't know.
What do you think?
And how many, how many are we talking about?
Yes, sir.
We're talking about two different houses.
No more.
Yes, sir.
What did they do?
They cracked.
Well, they decided that the world was wrong.
Not because of, didn't, not because of torture?
No, sir.
I don't think so.
Oh.
Well, that's true.
I think they decided that.
They just decided that.
You know, that's, there are small numbers.
Yes, sir.
Sure is.
Then maybe we, we should do something.
I think charges are going to be referring us.
By whom?
By the senior officer, Carl John Flynn.
John?
John Flynn, sir.
He is, he is, he ranks me.
Yes, sir.
Oh, he, yes, sir.
Would you like to see him?
He, he is not out yet, sir.
He's on the next one.
He's on the next one.
and they feel charged for any manner of coming out.
Now, what we've done is we've kept this under wraps.
I briefed everyone personally, got their name, that they will not, there is no debriefing being conducted on misconduct until every man comes out or until Edward Warren tells us to change.
So everything is under wraps.
Well, the men feel it ought to be done, but they don't want to make it public
In other words, it could be done.
It could be done momentarily.
Now, whether it will leak out or how much will leak out, I don't know.
But they feel that these men, in other words, that I give these men a direct order to abide by the code of conduct and to obey the regulations we have in place.
They did not do this.
It was a direct decision.
They made tapes and they wrote statements and they met delegations and so forth for the litany.
They, uh, corresponded with the, uh, peaceniks back here.
They gave, in my opinion, gave aid cover to the enemy.
What about those three boys that got out of the peaceniks?
What did they, uh... Sir, they came out against a direct order.
They did?
Yes, sir.
There was a direct order saying you will not take early release.
Okay.
So they, they are not in the highest position?
No, sir.
They certainly are not.
And the men in the county?
and our respect for you and the administration, because we did not know politically what was good and what was bad.
We liked it.
I'll take a look at that, too.
Now, the other thing is this.
We had a terribly difficult problem, as you know, on this evening, or for me, this evening, right out here.
I'm not very good at those assassins.
There are a terrible bunch of people who are Vietnamese.
Now, frankly, let's be candid.
The Vietnamese in Southeast Asia have always been the cruelest people in South Vietnamese.
The North Vietnamese have always been the cruelest people in South Vietnamese.
This is before you put communism on top of it.
In its early stages of development, you have cruelty over the worst type of all that I know.
Now, the question is whether the United States, after all the devastation they have done in South Vietnam, after what they've done for a few of their people, killed all those people,
that I am trying to equate this to helping the Japanese.
We should do it.
We should put it to the American people on the basis that we have been so wrong in bombing the North and the rest that we should do this as an act of tenets.
In fact, that's the only thing.
There can be no reparations if we don't find some rest.
On the other hand, it is our view at this point that
on a, that the, to have a stroke for these people, that an assistance program, which would be linked directly to their continuing degree, that'd be fun, for example, the ceasefire, getting out of the house, and so forth, and a program of assistance probably would serve the national interest.
Now,
Critical of that, of course, is how you false feel.
If you were to come back and say, well, I knew you'd say that, John.
I know what these people did to us.
Then, of course, that would be really significant.
And I suppose, too, that the stories with regard to how you were treated would speak to that trauma.
How do you feel about that?
You know, as we have talked about this, and in fact, they asked me a direct question on this twice, but not once, at a press conference.
Clark, and I at that time knew that it was, you had already said that you were going to have, or read instructions, in fact, a bit of these.
A high-level, I call him a high-level, not one for us to call him, but he was a much higher than the, than the camp commander, came to talk to me twice before I was released, and he was apprehensive that something we were going to say would rock the boat.
And he, and I, and I'll give you as near a quote as I can.
He said, you know, Mr., the second time he talked to me, he said, you know, Mr. Kissinger is already in Hanoi, and he seemed to be very proud of the fact that this is, I knew he was supposed to write.
He said, now, if you go out and slander our government, our people, then the negotiations for diplomatic relations, because he was new to me, may,
uh, be jeopardized.
And this guy's company had, uh, spoke good English to all the clients.
And he said, uh, we wouldn't want you to do that.
This guy was trying to be very nice to us.
Just a day before my release.
And he'd already said, look,
Mike, Jeffrey, and he also went on to say, I expect in the near future that there will be many hundreds, he added, of Americans, both military and civilian here, to assist North Vietnam in their reconstruction.
And he said, and then he went on to the confidential area, he said, you know, we, the rumor has it, and I'm quitting, that Mr.
Kiss
time to visit for President Nixon, not in Peking.
And I'm giving him his word.
And he said, I didn't laugh at him at the time, but I told the others they laughed.
But he was quite apprehensive about what you said.
In fact, I had three visits in the week preceding my release from the henchmen of the guy that used to
The whole operation, as far as we were concerned, was major body.
He came three times to intimidate me into blackmailing me and not telling the truth.
and he wanted to know what I was going to say, and I didn't want to get him relieved.
I just said, I'm going to tell him whatever.
Everything could happen.
And he said, you know, we've got many documents that you wrote, and we'll tell the whole world.
We'll tell them you did it voluntarily.
And he used the same thing on Devin and Stockdale.
And they were, in other words, they were trying to hit us.
They were scared, or at least I think they were scared of what we were going to say.
But
Now, we talked about this before we came out.
What we were going to say, and it was my thought, and I asked it to all the others, that not knowing the political atmosphere, that we should wait and find out before we said anything.
That's what we tried to do.
And so, as far as what we feel about reconstruction, there are strong feelings, I guess, of enemies from some people who have been tormented.
These feelings may come out in some form or another, but I think the majority, the great majority, will support Reconstruction if it's your desire.
Let me tell you the purpose of it.
The purpose of it is frankly to have a lever on the mother and something to have her back.
Oh, yes.
again uh
We need to stop it.
Or if they are very general trading now, that would be great.
We're warning them all the time.
We're going to have to get them up and on the trade all next week.
But the best way to guarantee the peace is for us to have influence on Hawaii because the only other two countries that will have influence on Hawaii will be China and Russia.
China or Russia will never, cannot be caught losing their hands.
is that the Chinese and Russians, because they're aiming for each other, it's very tough.
We, however, will use our influence
We recognize that as the influence of the communists is very difficult.
We've played a pretty clever game so far.
We influence the Chinese.
We influence the Russians.
That's why the whole world seems changing in the present time.
I don't mean by that the dangers, but it does mean we've got a different kind of category than previously.
What we want here
really is to have, is to, is to have, with the North Vietnamese, the, a, an influence on their high councils.
In order to have influence, you either gotta have something you're gonna do to them, or they're gonna take away from you.
Now, what can you do to them?
Well, we contract them up, and they start the, the immigration again, and so forth, and so on, and so on, and they will come back as a pretty, you know, decanted one.
On the other hand, you could say, all right, if you do this, that might be a very important thing.
Because they are, they have, that place is, it's poor, they've lost a lot more than men, they've lost the, so that's really the argument, you see.
The argument is a cold, pragmatic argument.
That's not to do with the heart, believe me, not as far as I'm concerned.
It has a great deal to do with the head.
Yes, sir.
That's right.
I think you can rest assured that it can be less important, but the vast majority... Let me ask you, what about the Marge organization thing, who said that he and he came in and he laid it to us?
As you're probably aware, the most difficult decision I had to make, well, there were several different ones.
Half a million marching around the White House in October of 1990.
And we had the situation where we had the Man of Ars of Cambodia thing, which we had to do, which helped.
Everything we did in these various things, that Cambodian thing, knocking out those sanctuaries, Clark catching his dad.
Yes, the Vietnamese told us, you see.
Oh.
But they told us.
Oh, yes.
Yes, it didn't mean nothing.
Sure.
Ah, and to many people, they thought, and there is, from a political standpoint, there is, which was the main decision, the bombing of the mining.
Do we know the bombing of the mining?
I don't know, because it came just two weeks before the summit.
All the wise people thought it.
But we had to do it because, as I said, the American president couldn't go to Russia and be there in the ground meeting with Russia on Soviet transfer, running through the streets in a way that, rather than canceling the summit, they would cancel it.
They met, and we made a good deal with them because our communist friends understand how the one thing, and that is they respect the one thing, and that is strength.
I don't mean by that that you have good luck.
Unless they know that you can do something to them, they're not going to do anything.
Never.
We checked.
No sign of it.
But the toughest decision was the December 18th one.
Uh, here, right after the election and all the rest, everybody was in the state before the war was going to be over and so forth and so on.
And then these people, they torpedoed the conference in Paris.
They patched conditions for the release of the controls.
The condition being that they wanted to tie it back again, or at least just a little bit, because you know, the South Indian police, which we knew the South Indian police would never release.
And, and so I can see, first that you weren't going to get home for Christmas.
And second, I read, it's two in the second.
So I said, we have to go.
So we've got more and all the rest.
And they said, well, what do you do?
I said, well, they only fly three or four days at most over the next three or four weeks because of the weather.
I said, well, it's fine.
We'll keep it at the Jews.
I said, keep it at the Jews or my idea.
And they said, well, we'll lose them.
I said, all right.
I said, what are they for?
What are they for?
I said, they've got to be used.
So we started leaving the Jews in there, and boy, it was rough, because we lost three or four of them, first thing, and five the next one, and everybody's sweet over here.
And people that have been our friends, the conservatives, the Republicans, the Democrats, the evangelicals, because I didn't go on and explain it, I just did it, and sent a message to them on the 18th saying this will continue until you agree.
That day, we had decided we were going to go back to some of the state department people and they said, oh, well, you better stop too much opera and perhaps the bombing won't bring it back to the table.
I was bored at the time, and I called him more and more, and I said, no, no, I'm just going to pass it on.
I said, every 52 that can fly goes over that thing.
There were 160 that went that day.
And
24 hours later, we got the message.
Now, that's the true story.
But did you, were you aware of any of this?
You could have already told me that you fellows all knew that they were 52, of course.
It's a tell-all.
Yes, sir.
Yes.
We tell the bomb traits.
We count all the bombs.
There was no doubt what was happening.
And these bars that the Jews and the people of the camp were just...
Yes.
And then we thought we were out of our minds.
We were tipping up and down and cheering and people were crying.
That's what the agents did there.
And then you also were aware of it when you got back from the college.
Yes.
Well, you know, that was a big night.
Yes.
Oh, that was the biggest one.
That was a real fire.
Yes.
Well, the plaster fell down.
fell out of the windows, all sorts of things.
Most of the fellows that did feel the...
say that we had a second church made out.
Yes, sir.
You see, absolutely.
We felt, and that's the reason we said so when we came back.
We felt that you and Roger Shields told us that you were responsible for the big 52 right there.
So when we said, we meant that because we had to do it.
There was no other choice.
But they gave up.
They thought bombing had never worked.
The point is, bombing had not worked because it had not been used effectively.
And I have great admiration for President Johnson.
But the greatest mistake he made was to stop that bombing before I got in, because I never knew of that.
Because the only way to do it would be bombing mine and ours.
in about October that they came across with a deal, which was a pretty good one, and they backed off after, remember, they thought they could do this long when the Congress got through.
But if those 52s had been used in 1968, you'd have backed them.
I mean, 70s, 70s, 80s.
That certainly had probably 1,000 people put their vote in.
Yes, sir.
When that, you know, we stayed awake and watched it all.
We watched the sands.
We counted as many as 22 sands going up where we could see them.
And we watched the bombs and people cheering.
were covered and they laid there and they told me they were crazy they were this is what i want to tell you psychologically the b-52s did nothing else psychologically the b-52s did the job you see they have before been accustomed to fire something and dive off you or they could see them they could shoot at them they have an enemy they could come to grips with none of the b-52s came over an altitude and at night and in weather they could no longer see them
And they were, their radar was jammed, so they were siloing their SAMs.
Their radar guns were no longer effective, so they were out there.
Here, these things were flying at every altitude.
You still had semi-savages here in Vietnam, even the civilized tour.
So, all I can hear is this.
And so when those bombers started hitting them, they really, for the first time, became scared.
So they came in, and they would be pulling the plaster off their hats.
And here we were, covered with plaster, cheering and jumping up and down and joking.
And they came under, coming in by so-and-so's eyes, came in the door.
to listen to him, and it began to look like we were going to have trouble, so I ordered him to lay down, and he said, the building had, you know, some damage because of the concussions, and he said, look, they're trying to kill you.
Your own friends are trying to kill you.
Our friends don't have a heart.
And then he had me down for an interrogation that morning.
And he was somewhat angry because he said, you were agreeing that our Vietnamese people should be murdered, you know, just regular line.
I said, no, I wasn't agreeing to that until there was peace.
You had to expect there to be a lot of this until there was peace.
But this was the consensus.
Everyone knew that the B-52s was trying to trick me so that the
They used to laugh and shoot and have fun when the fighters were coming out.
They didn't seem to bother.
Not this time.
But not this time.
They really turned to fear.
And we felt it was just a show.
Those were great guys.
They had kind of, frankly, a cakewalk on this one.
It was a lost one.
And they sort of got the impression that it was all unneeded and so forth.
But when they put it to them, they did well, too.
How about those guys that came in?
We talked about this.
We don't know the full circumstances, but it seems, and this is just a guess on our part, that you were talking about New America.
Maybe they're the product of this, you know, because they didn't take torture, you see what I mean?
Well, I can't, uh, I must, I appreciate this talk and the chance to see you.
I guess we've got to go back to that, sir.
I'm so mad about that.
Say, are you a golfer?
Yes, sir.
Well, when you're, you have gifts to make a little credit for you, but I give you a presidential golf ball.
Oh, thank you very much.
How's that?
Well, you're most grateful.
I won't express it when I see all of you.
Sir, this is not a trite call, but there's any way that any of us can serve you as an administration.
This is a sincere thing.
If it would help me to talk to all those that are returning to talk to John, and pass any information that you pass to me,
important is the reconstruction, the reason for it, and something I want to say to the
Now, is this going to really rock the boat?
Because torture and degradation and everything is going to come out in the open.
And this is one that's being planned because there are very strong...
I can see that.
Let me think about how nice it would be if you had any words.
The people are still where we can locate them and get them together.
They still... You could always, I'm sure you will, you must always know.
I'm sure when you're sitting together, it's gathering.
I am too.
You've got some service.
Now you all have a bond with nobody else.
Yes, sir, I think we have.
And they've told us that we can't...
Well, you're a strong man.
God has been good to this country to let you come back and do it.
You must know that it is our privilege.
We do not expect rewards.
And we are astonished at the sincerity of it.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Yes, I need to know.
I don't need all this.
I put your picture back here.
I think that helps me out.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
All right, sir.
Great.
Okay.
Bye.
Thank you.
they would proceed to bring that out.
My own guess is that's probably not a good idea.
I don't know.
What do you feel?
And how many, how many are we talking about?
We're talking about two different possibilities.
No more.
Yes, sir.
What do they do?
They crack.
Well, they decided that the world was wrong.
Not because of it.
Not because of torture.
Yes, sir.
I know.
I think they decided...
They just decided it.
You know, that's a small number, isn't it?
Yes, sir.
It sure is.
Then maybe we should do something.
I think charges are going to be referring us to... By whom?
By the senior officer, Carl John Flynn.
John who?
John Flynn, sir.
He is...
He ranks me.
Yes, sir.
Oh, he is?
Yes, sir.
Would you like to see him?
He is not out, sir.
He was shot down as a full permanent for up until now.
That was not his time of shoot down.
And we did not choose the full permanent where I believe the captain is.
He happened to rank off.
I rank off.
Being an old lady now, I know the captain.
He is.
But it just so happened that there may be captains flying in combat.
He therefore...
And they deal charges for any manner of coming out.
Now, what we've done is we've kept this under wraps.
I briefed everyone personally.
I got their name.
They will not.
There is no debriefing being conducted on misconduct until a man comes out or until Edward Moore tells us.
to change, so everything is under review.
Well, the men feel it ought to be done, but they don't want to make it public.
In other words, it could be done.
It could be done momentarily.
Now, whether it will leak out or how much will leak out, I don't know.
But they feel that these men, in other words, that I give these men a direct order to abide by the Code of Conduct and to obey the regulations we have in place.
They did not do this.
It was a direct dispute.
They made tapes and they wrote statements and they met delegations and so forth for the litany.
They corresponded with the peacemates back here.
They gave, in my opinion, gave aid and comfort to the enemy.
What about those three horses that got out?
Sir, they came out against a direct order.
They did?
Yes, sir.
There was a directive out saying you will not take early release.
Okay.
So they, they are not in the highest position?
No, sir.
They certainly not.
And the men have kept their lips buttoned simply because the guys are being in, in, in, out of respect for you and, and the administration because we did not know politically what was good and what was bad.
We like it.
I'll, I'll take a look at that, too.
Now, the other thing is this.
We had a terribly difficult problem, as you know, on the state of the North.
I mean, there's nothing left of me right now here.
I am not forgetting those assassins.
They're a terrible bunch of people in our Vietnamese.
Now, frankly, let's be candid.
The Vietnamese in Southeast Asia have always been the cruelest people in South Vietnamese, and our Vietnamese have been the cruelest people in South Vietnamese.
This is before you put communism on top of it.
that I am trying to equate this to helping the Japanese.
We should do it.
We should put it to the American people on the basis that we have been so wrong in bombing the North and the rest that we should do this as an act of tenacity.
That's all I mean.
There can be no reparations if we don't do this.
On the other hand, it is our view at this point that
on a, that they, to have a stroke with these people, that they have an assistance program which would be linked directly to their continuing degree.
That'd be fun, for example, a ceasefire, getting out of the house, and so forth.
A program of assistance probably would serve the national interest.
Now,
Critical of that, of course, is how you false feel.
If you were to come back and say, well, I knew you didn't say that.
I don't know what these people did to us.
Then, of course, that would be really significant.
I suppose, too, that the stories in regard to how I'm treated, I don't have much faith in that at all.
I don't even know what to do about it.
In fact, they asked me a direct question on this twice now, once at a press conference.
he was apprehensive that something we were going to say would rock the boat
And he, and I, and I'll give you as near a quote as I can.
He said, you know, Mr., the second time he talked to me, he said, you know, Mr. Kissinger is already in Hanoi, and he seemed to be very proud of the fact that, yes, I knew he was supposed to arrive.
And he said, now, if you go out and slander our government, our people, then the negotiations for diplomatic relations, because he
may uh be jeopardized and this guy's company had spoke good english and he said we wouldn't want you to do that this guy was trying to be very nice because it's just the day before my release and he'd already said look the war's over
And he also went on to say,
time to visit for President Nixon, not in Peking.
And I'm giving him his word.
And he said, I didn't laugh at him at the time, but I told the others and they laughed.
But he was quite apprehensive about what you were saying.
In fact, I had three visits in the week preceding my release from the henchmen of the guy that used
The whole operation, as far as we were concerned, was major body.
He came three times to intimidate me into blackmailing me and not telling the truth.
And he wanted to know what I was going to say.
And I didn't want to get him to leave.
I just said, I'm going to sell it.
Whatever.
Everything could happen.
And he said, you know, we've got many documents that you wrote.
And we'll tell the whole world.
We'll tell them you did it voluntarily.
And he used the same thing on Devin and Stockdale.
And they were, in other words, they were trying to hit us by the ass.
They were scared.
Or at least I think they were scared of what we were going to say.
But...
Now, we talked about this before we came out.
What we were going to say, and it was my thought, and I asked it to all the others, that not knowing the political atmosphere, that we should wait and find out before we said anything.
So that's what we're trying to do.
And so, as far as what we feel about Reconstruction, there are strong feelings, I guess, that it needs from some people who've
These feelings may come out in some form or another, but I think the majority, the great majority, will support Reconstruction if it's your desire.
Let me tell you the purpose of it.
The purpose of it is frankly to have a lever on the mother and something to have in the back of the head.
Oh, yes.
Well, I'm wondering, I think you may explain it very simply.
I didn't know what you... Well, you don't say that at all.
You don't say that.
But the purpose is not to do that.
Would that be detrimental?
Uh, no.
In other words, it might not.
Let's suppose that they break the ceasefire by a massive invasion of the South.
Again, uh...
or if they are very general trading now, that would be great.
We're warning them all the time here.
I mean, they're not going to trade all that sweet.
But the best way to guarantee the peace is for us to have influence in Hanoi because the only other two countries that will have influence in Hanoi will be China and Russia.
China or Russia will never, cannot be caught losing their hands.
We're going to try to have a Chinese and Russian because they're aiming for each other.
It's very tough.
We are.
What we recognize is that as the influence of the communists is very difficult.
We've played a pretty clever game so far.
We influence the Chinese.
We influence the Russians.
That's why the whole world seems changing the rest of the time.
I don't think that the dangers of this stuff is gone, but it does seem we've got it in a different kind of category than previously.
What we want here
really is to have, is to, is to have, with the RFP and the teams, a, a, an influence on their high counsels.
In order to have an influence, you've either got to have something that they're going to do to them, or they're going to take away from them.
Now, what can you do to them?
Well, we can track them up, and they start the, the progression again, and so forth, and so on, and start running around.
They will come back as a pretty, you know, you can, you know,
On the other hand, we could say, all right, if you do this, look at Dr. Archie, that might be a very important thing.
Because they are, they have, that place is, it's poor, they've lost a lot more than men, they've lost the, so that's really the argument, you see.
The argument is a cold, pragmatic argument.
That's not to do with the heart, believe me, not as far as I'm concerned.
It has a great deal to do with the head.
So that's the basis of the two-year percentile.
And I think I can assure you, I'm so important.
The great majority of the purpose is to try to guarantee peace.
That's what I'm trying to do.
After all the suffering and all this thing you work on, I know it's tough.
It's tough for that.
I've done it for years.
It's tough.
It's going to be tough to guarantee peace because these two sides are not going to be able to kill each other for a long time.
But an uneasy peace is better than a war we're in.
And so that's what it is to me.
That's right.
I think, I think you can rest assured that it can be less important than the vast majority.
I'll be happy to.
One of my admirers told me an interesting thing.
He said that, uh, he, uh, he came in a few days because, uh, as you're probably aware, the most difficult decision I had to make, uh, well, there were several different, uh, half a million marching around the White House in October,
And then we had the situation where we had the Man of Ars of Cambodia thing, which we had to do, which helped.
Everything we did in these various things about the Cambodian thing, knocking out those sanctuaries, the guard catching these attacks,
Yes, the Vietnamese told us, you see.
Oh.
But they told us.
Yes, it didn't mean nothing to us.
Ah, and many people, they thought, and the risk from a political standpoint, the risk was the main decision.
The bombing, the mining.
Do we know the bombing or the mining?
I don't know, because it came just two weeks before the summit.
Although I think
but we had to do it because, as I said, the American president couldn't go to Russia and be there in the ground.
He put Russia on Soviet hands for running through the streets in a way that rather than canceling the summit, they would cancel it.
They would have, and we made a good deal with them because our communist friends understand only one thing, and that is they respect only one thing, and that is the strike.
I don't think of that picture as brutal as it is.
But the toughest decision was the December 18 one.
uh, here right after the election and all the rest, everybody was in the state of New York and the war was going to be over and so forth and so on.
And then these people, they torpedoed the conference in Paris, they attached conditions to the release of the controls, a condition in that they wanted to tie it back again, or at least just a little bit, to the South Indian police, which we knew the South Indian police would never release.
And so I could see, first that you weren't going to get home for Christmas,
And second, I never had to consider it.
It's two and a second.
So I said, we have to go.
So we met more and all the rest.
And they said, well, what do you want to do?
I said, well, I only fly three or four days at most over the next three or four weeks for the weather.
I said, well, it's kind of a leap of the tubes.
A leap of the tubes were my idea.
They said, well, we'll do this.
I said, all right.
I said, what are they for?
What are they for?
I said, they've got to be used.
So we started leaving the Jews in there, and boy, it was rough, because we lost three or four of the first thing, five the next one, everybody's legal here.
And people that have been our friends, the conservatives, the Republicans, the Democrats, the evangelicals, because I didn't go on and explain it, I just did it, and sent a message to them on the 18th saying this will continue until you agree to
remember it was Christmas balls.
That day, we had decided we were going to go back to some of the state department people, and they said, oh, well, you better stop too much off-roaring, or else the bombing won't bring it back to the table.
I was bored at the time, and I called him more and more, and I said, no, I'm not interested.
He passed away.
I said, every 52 that can fly goes over that thing.
There were 116 of them that day.
And
24 hours later, we got the message.
Now, that's the true story.
But did you, were you aware of any of this?
You could have told me that you fellows all knew that they were 52, of course.
It's a tell-all.
Yes, sir.
Yes.
We tell the bomb traits.
We count all the bombs.
They started...
there was no doubt what was happening.
And the East Forest and the Jews and the people of the camp were just...
Yes.
And then we thought we were out of our minds.
We were tipping up and down and cheering, and people were crying.
That's on the 18th, isn't there?
I bet you also were aware of it when you got back from college.
Oh, yes.
Well, you know, the other time, it was a big night.
Yes.
Oh, it was the biggest one.
That's a real fire.
Yes.
Well, the plaster fell down,
things, fell out of the windows, all sorts of things.
And there was always such exertions.
Really.
Most of the two guys.
Most of the fellows that did feel that, you could say, that behind the scenes.
Yes, sir.
You see, absolutely.
We felt, and that's the reason we said so, and we keep back.
We felt that you and Roger Shields told us that you were responsible for the big
So when we said, I'm the man of honor, we meant that because we had to do it.
It was not a choice.
Even some of the defendants thought they gave up.
They thought bombing has never worked.
The point is, bombing cannot work because it has not been used effectively.
And I have great admiration for President Johnson.
The greatest mistake he made was to stop that bombing before I got in, because I couldn't renew it then.
Because the only way to do it would be to bomb and mine the army.
That is what they began practicing.
And then in October, they came across with a deal, which was a very good one.
And they backed off after, remember, they thought they could diddle us along when the Congress got through.
But if those 52s had been used in 1968, you didn't back then.
I did.
but you all you all have he said they all jumped up
We stayed awake and watched it all.
We watched the sands.
We counted as many as 22 sands going up where we could see them.
And we watched the bombs and people cheering.
back and they were covered and they laid there and they told me they're crazy they weren't this is what i'm going to tell you psychologically the b-52s did nothing else psychologically the b-52s did the job you see they have before been accustomed to fire something and dive off you or they could see them they could shoot at them they have an enemy they could come to grips with not a b-52
and weather, they could no longer see them, and they were, their radar was jammed, so they were siloing their SAMs, their radar guns were no longer effective, so they were out of business.
Here these things were flying at every altitude, and you still had semi-savages here in Vietnam, in the civilized tour, so all they could hear is the distant noise, and all at once,
got off a string of bombs that they've ever heard of.
It comes out of one bomber.
And so when those bombers started hitting them, they really, for the first time, became scared.
So they came in, and they would be pulling the plaster off their hats.
And here we were, covered with plaster, cheering and jumping up and down and joking.
And the camp commander, accompanied by some of his guards, came to the door.
and began to look like we were going to have trouble, so I ordered him to lay down.
And he said, the building had, you know, some damage because of the concussions.
He said, look, they're trying to kill you.
Your own friends are trying to kill you.
I said, our friends are?
Yes.
And then he had me down for an interrogation that morning.
And he was somewhat angry because he said, you were agreeing that our people should be murdered, you know, just regular life.
I said, no, I wasn't agreeing to that until there was peace.
You wouldn't have to expect this.
There's going to be a lot of this until there's peace.
And we felt it was
We talked about this.
We don't know the full circumstances, but it seems, and this is just a guess on our part, that the thinking may have changed a little bit.
You were talking about a new America.
Yeah.
Maybe they're the product of this, you know, because they didn't take torture, you see what I mean?
Right.
To you, that's for sure.
Well, I can't, I must say that I appreciate this talk.
I'm so mad about that.
Say, are you a golfer?
Yes, sir.
Well, when you're here, we have gifts for you, but I give you a presidential golf ball.
Oh, thank you.
Well, you're most grateful.
I won't express it when I see all of you.
Sir, this is not a child golfer.
Any of us can serve you as an administration.
This is a sincere thing.
If it would help me to go talk to all those that are returning to talk to John, and pass any information he has passed to me, as to how important is the reconstruction, the reason for it, and something I want to say to the larger group that you're talking about.
Now, there's one other thing, and that's, is it important?
Now, is this going to really rock the boat?
Because torture and degradation and everything is going to come out in the open.
And this is one that's being planned because there are very strong people...
I can see that.
Let me think about how nice it would be if you had any words, uh, that people are still willing to locate them and get them together and, uh, they still- You need it always, and I'm sure you will, you must always know.
I mean, I'm sure once you stick them together, it gets better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better
Well, you're a strong man.
God has been good to this country to let you come back and do it.
You must know that it is our privilege.
We do not expect rewards.
And we are astonished at the sincerity of it.
You've got your hat.
Yes, I think you know I live in a neighborhood
Okay.
All right.