Conversation 876-013

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I thought you'd like a picture of the flies.

This is our farm.

Sorry to keep you waiting.

I had to sign some bills.

You know, you know, you got it.

We have coffee, tea, Coca-Cola, iced tea, iced coffee.

You've been here before in this office.

Only on tour.

Never in this office.

It's really, we got them two down, down, down.

Well, we, without going into extended obvious things, let me say that the nation we know has moved away.

But what I would like to do is just talk about what you all went through, how you did get together to...

I suppose what I would like to get at more

How do you see this country?

At first, how do you see it as you return?

And also, what those many years, how many years?

Seven years?

How many years?

And I was telling a couple of them that that's the right thing to do.

I said, no, look, many people don't realize why we have to see this war true to what I call an honorable conclusion.

Not what is honorable, but we do know what is dishonorable to end the war.

And the reason was not just to lead the main thing.

The credibility of the United States was one that stood by its allies and could therefore be respected by its own.

If, for example, we had not stood by a small country like South Vietnam, I don't know what they'd call our hand.

But we do, by virtue of our great power struggle in this tremendously intricate game we're playing, and there's more than a game between the Chinese and Russians, I'm sure you...

I'm not as up to date on the Chinese-Russian thing as I should be.

Are we all in between now?

Yeah, but I...

Well, anyway, the fight is, they, a lot of money,

Yeah.

about Johnson and Kennedy got us into this war, get us out, and the people would be relieved.

And by the way, I said, no, I said, that doesn't make any sense to us.

This is Johnson's war, Kennedy's war, it's America's.

And that's the way it always is.

I said, we have got to end it the right way.

Now, and the major reason I said, or ironically, to an extent, the speech I made on November 3rd, 1969,

If the United States had failed and come back to defeat and disgrace the United States, the United States would have ceased that day in a little while.

The American people would have been torn apart.

The war tore us apart.

The frustrations

It's going to be hard enough as it is, even in the war that we did, to get the United States to continue to play a responsible role in the world.

And it must, because as you know and I know, if we step aside, this is the life and time of the world.

It isn't even like before World War II.

There's no break from the world among us.

The French can't do it, the British can't do it, the Germans could have done it, but we won't let them.

And the Japanese can't.

So it's just that it's all here.

If we step out, the Russians are there today, the Chinese will be there tomorrow, and that's the world.

So we've got to keep this.

And so what really evolved in all of the suffering that you've all suffered, and the lives we've lost, as much as anything, is what America thinks of itself.

And that was the thing that I noticed.

You might say, no, they're working its own way.

So, one of the reasons, if you're wondering, was that you had seen a profound problem that we had to do since the American spirit was in place.

And you folks, curiously enough, went through

went through hell for seven years, and you come back stronger.

And people, uh, maybe that tells us something.

I, it's rather interesting to note that many of the great revolutionaries, not that I care or something, but Gandhi spent years in prison, Sarkar has spent years in prison, etc., and he'd come out stronger and stronger.

The right of, the right of mission and death.

but basically it's always been my theory which is not accepted by the present day psychologists or psychologists or whatever they are that adversity if it does not break you have strength if it does not break you it breaks you have strength so I think the country I'm talking about adversity the country perhaps has a

our mistake and all of you because of the fact that you're coming back the way you did, head-to-head, and we're still really proud that the ministry of life will make it just for me.

We didn't have any issues with other people.

If we had bugged out yesterday, in fact, we wouldn't have walked off the plane that way.

I think that's exactly right.

Now, the other side of the problem is that

The, uh, the, uh, the, the question is, uh, now, uh, which I'd like to ask you to introduce to me.

How do you do it?

How do you handle that through all that?

Each, of course, goes through it in a different way.

But, uh, you were in solitary a lot, I presume.

Four years.

Four years in solitary.

but just tell me as to how did you keep your mind going and your spirit in that period?

I don't know if you can be brief so much.

This is probably a bulldozer, but it's probably interesting to me.

I'm trying to find out what really is the spirit of this country.

It's a funny thing.

It's all the people who have expressed different kinds of interests.

You know what I mean?

find an order in your life, you tend to say, well, in some cases, I'm in such a position that I won't exercise or try to do anything because I have such a vision of praying and such and such kind of things all the time, that sort of thing.

But after a while, I think in my case, it turns out to be the biggest mistake I could make, I think, a man with me would have been

of finding myself, of finding God.

And I would say, you know how it is.

You've been a prisoner here.

Anybody who's a prisoner, or anybody who's self-sufficient, and you've gone through that same process, where they can find you, and you've come out of it.

Well, then the – what would you say would be your analysis with regard to you?

You know a lot of the men were there.

The red majority survived.

Yes.

Yes, sir.

well we may we may have to move that thing because a little earlier because of the fact that they want to find some big thing and that's where we should go for it and we thought about 60 days after the last man anyway so we've been able to

That's right.

that we would have you brought in for a briefing on national security.

In other words, to take the whole group over to the State Department inventory with your products and put you down there and be put on the pitch.

In other words, here's our problem, so forth.

I'll do some of it, and I'll do, or we'll have, I don't know, and that would be to put Kissinger on and Parker Rogers.

We have to work on that.

policy is and so forth and so on.

We've missed it.

That's right.

We've missed it.

Yeah.

But I meant that you are all meant for the service.

Do you think they would like to have another way to spend about an hour and a half?

So that you comfort.

Yeah.

So you get something other than this.

That's right.

That would make some sense.

That's right.

That would make some sense.

And even if we were to put 200 of them together, I think we'd be able to put them all together.

So what we're going to do, I think, is put a big tent outside.

And have everybody out there.

Now, one small thing I haven't mentioned, but I guess I want to ask you, that's the question

I think we should say to the ladies, the long dresses, and for the men, there you are.

Thank you.

Wouldn't the uniform be the nice way to do it?

Most of us.

95% of us, at least our seniors.

I'd be right there for the look.

To need that formal uniform anyway.

Sure, sure.

So I think that would be the way to do it.

Well, he said we might be able to get that done.

Then he thought we'd have a very pleasant dinner.

But you would try to arrange tables, round tables, you know.

Everybody wants energy in the whole world.

And you'll have a lot of that running out of years of conditioning for it.

We don't, we're not going to have television on here any time soon.

But we thought we would do it.

It's your party.

We thought we might get bottled.

He used to do all those things for Vietnam.

And made his last show.

But we also had a few other stars.

But we get him.

We got a whole bunch of Les Browns artists here that are dancing.

So that's on our list.

Well, so much for that.

The thing that I was...

I didn't mean to cut off your...

I'm answering your question about where we found it, but I did want to make the... Where?

Where do you want me to go?

You asked how we found the strength, and I said, well, I can't tell you anything.

No, no, I understand.

But basically...

Yes, I can guess plenty of details.

We were tortured.

Yeah.

He told me about it in some of the...

He said he exercised.

He said, you know, you do that too.

Sure.

So I'm delighted to communicate with the guys and kind of rent things out early in the game.

It was quite an impression on us.

Did you develop that system of communications?

Were there some systems where you could send signals via code?

Yes, sir.

We had a number of systems.

That's a great story.

You know, we had a normal system of tapping on the walls, and that's very simple.

You lay out the alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, the first line, and then the next five letters, and the next five, and you end up with 25 letters leaving out the letter K. So you have five columns, five lines.

And it was not about which column, which line, but about other tabs.

Like, B would be the first line, the second one over, so that's B.

We had that number.

But we found that if we wanted to communicate with the man about three cells, we had to get him tortured.

We were tortured, and we couldn't make that most of the time.

We tried the coffee, but most of the time, it was more of a loader seat take, so...

But I wanted to have one natural sound that you gave me the column and one natural sound that gave me the line.

But this D, instead of having five, you know, just one gave me one sound, one distinction.

they wouldn't lower themselves to admit to us that they realized we were going to get out of the way, that we were going to get out of the way.

We had a hard no, sir.

But what I wanted to express to you, if I could, is not just thanks for getting us home.

I don't mean to be so conceited, but I have something for international affairs, and I feel that

Never in our recent history, and I don't know about our foreign history, has there been a time when a resident had had such a difficult childhood, and they should go on a party or more, and maybe have a bachelor's or something.

But apparently, he was a hero of something to do that.

It certainly appears to me like that.

I believe that history will say that.

I believe that history will know that.

And I'm sorry, but I don't know what's going to happen.

This may take time to realize and follow through what you've started there now.

Let me, let me, let me tell you what I, I'm going to reply to what you're going to consider.

First of all, what, what it's all about.

The aid has nothing to do with people.

No, I understand.

And I understand.

The aid, aid is a, aid is a tool.

that we can use within our communities to restrain.

Now, let's look at it in cold blood.

If we don't hit it, it will leave just only two voices in all.

Moscow's competing, both of them compete with each other in terms of making them be aggressive because neither of them will be caught not supporting the World Revolution.

If we're in there,

We might restrain them.

I'm not sure.

They're savages.

They're barbarians.

They're terrible people.

But if we're there, there's a chance we can restrain them.

And, frankly, let's face it, if they break out again, we stop dealing.

Because the whole purpose of the aid is just to get the U.S. voice in there so that in Laos, for example, first they've got to get out of Laos.

And then again, when they withdraw from Laos, they'll never be there until they're out of Laos.

But we'll say, all right, now they're able to have the same regard.

We'll probably be able to say, no, if you break the ceasefire, you can't go trade again, and so forth and so on.

It's not.

But that's what we're really talking about.

It's not it.

It's we all know that the investment in aid after World War II was very, very successful.

Now there is a difference.

their governments, although in Japan, let's face it, the same people always rule Japan.

It's what's imminent.

The same people always rule Japan.

But Japan's turning away from military pursuits to economic and peaceful pursuits has been a great development in the post-war world.

In Germany, the same.

One, two, three, four, five.

It's not totally, because they think I'm a little, shall we say, crazy.

Which is good.

You see, one of the things about the white winners here, the period of the center was very silent.

Well, it's a funny thing.