Nixon, Kissinger & McCloy on Arms Control Advisory Committee

He was so horrified at it because that was the wrong thing to do.
And he deliberately called in and got over a press guy.
He leaked it to the press.
Now, in my view, let me say that I, that's why I didn't much care for George Biden's testimony.
That's a different thing.
But you know what is secret, what is not secret.
But a man in government, where the hell is trust from?
I mean, here, the president made the decision.
It involved the lives of a lot of men.
Most of them are not our own.
And so some guy who was undersecretary of state, and I know who it was.
He could have already .
But he had delivered the leak to the press, which
Charitized the whole operation.
It was going to be jeopardized anyway.
But that sort of thing does not really burn your tail.
We're just on our own.
I mean, did you know about that Bowles business?
Oh, I didn't know.
I literally did.
No charge.
But you told me about it the other day.
He bragged later.
He says, I shot that.
It blew.
He says, I shot that.
I don't spot it.
Well, anyway, that's the kind of guy we don't want on this committee.
You've got people on that committee who don't know where to damn except for the labor connection.
He doesn't attribute it.
He doesn't understand it.
He doesn't follow it.
There's another guy, John Wheeler, the Princeton fellow, who's a scientist, who's on the committee and very screwed very well.
But he doesn't attribute it.
You know, .
Larry Norstedt.
I wouldn't suggest Larry is the chair of the committee.
I don't think he would work.
He wouldn't do the work.
He wouldn't do the work.
He'd take it up.
He'd actually go on.
But I mean, those are three pretty good things.
That's good, that's good, that's good.
I'm not going to say one thing works, but I mean, I'm not frustrated.
I'm not mad at anybody.
I'm not mad at anybody.
I just didn't get over it.
I spent a lot of time in this 12 years of this thing.
And I give it a lot of favor and strength, I think, over the years.
But it's not my initiative to care how.
The other aspect, the thing that I'm talking about, probably preoccupies me.
And at any point, I could be of any help in the section of this event or this life.
Let me know of a special mission I can undertake at a given point.
But I'm not talking in terms of government job.
I'm thinking just that I want to preoccupy my thinking and my own energies to some other things rather than techniques.
Well, let me tell you a concern that I have that you might put your mind to it.
I would appreciate it.
I frankly talk to your friends in New York, movers and shakers.
As a result of the foreign policy initiatives in the last year, the trip to China and all of them, the trip to the Soviet Union with the arms control and all the grain and all the other things,
the ending of the war, and he has not imagined it.
He goes everybody back to the company, the marching group, and so forth.
As a result of all that, the United States is now going through, and should likely be in the Congress, that usual post-war reaction.
Well, thank God that this is over.
It's in spades.
It's in spades for two reasons.
One, because the war was so difficult and divisive, and two, because they said, gee, we're doing so great, the world must be safer.
Now, the world isn't that much safer, as you well know.
At the present time, we have to realize that the reason that our foreign policy initiative succeeded was that we were strong.
We had never had to deal with the Russians if we had gone in there with, let's say, a broken flush.
But what we need to do is not, I don't mean by that to mean an arms deal, but I don't mean by that
or with the press level and the rest.
But I do say that this is the critical time.
This year saw two coming up, with MPFR coming up, and with the Europeans, with their weak infrastructure, as far as government is concerned, led by basically, with the exception of these rather parochial political leaders.
I think that the United States now cops out in terms of leadership with, we're going to have all the time.
I think the same is true of the Japanese at the present time.
All of their fancy talk and the rest, you know as well as I, that they are going to be on the losing side again.
And the Japanese, therefore, the Russians, the Chinese, they're tired of us because of the economics.
And of course because we provide the shield.
But again, where we are in the world is this.
Very substantial cuts to the defense budget.
Frankly, any substantial cuts, I think, could be disastrous for our foreign policy at this point.
We have cut that thing right down to now.
Second, cutting back in Europe, even on the basis that John McClellan suggested.
He said, let's just bring out 30,000.
It could unravel a whole lot.
If it's done now, it's got to be done multiple that way.
Now, I would hope, I would hope that the
The establishment falls in there.
I mean, I understand their attitudes, many of them, on the war and so forth.
They thought we should have been headed somewhere and retired and all that sort of thing.
But the United States has got to continue to play a role in this world, and we can't play it without respect and without strength.
And that doesn't, I don't think many people are going to get there.
I think this post-war reaction could be the worst thing to happen to this country.
We'll pay a terrible price.
And all the shibboleths, you know, our friends at the council, what did the Russian influence in India?
That they are the monopoly supplier of finance.
And all the economic aid we give to India has not made up for the damage.
And also, if you look at Latin America, let's say something.
You go through all this nonsense.
The fact that the United States should not furnish arms to Latin America, all right, fine.
Okay, we want some, so the French do.
All right, so what's the end?
The point is that the military in Latin America, which is one of the few state-wide, or it's not really state-wide, at least they've got control.
Look at Indonesia.
Now, believe me, if we had maintained, as you well know, if we had maintained that minimal arms program in Indonesia at a time when Sukarno was just kicking us all around the world, Indonesia today would be communist.
140 million people.
It was the Army that saved us there.
The United States needed that kind of an influence in there.
What I think is, take the Council of Foreign Relations, and I know them pretty well, and I know, when I say I know them, I know their attitudes, I think.
And I know they'll cheer and holler about everybody that comes up.
They all thought that China trip was wonderful.
Isn't it great?
President Nixon
My point is that we can make the world safer now, but it's only because of the accident of history, you all know, with the Chinese and the Russians.
Split.
With that said, we have got now to play a strong role, and it's particularly important, and here's where Europe comes in.
I think the whole European thing is going to require a vast amount of rethinking, a vast amount of rethinking in terms of how American interests can be served by, if they can be served by, a Europe united and united, but not enough.
shall we say, a cooperative way, but a confronting way with the United States.
They can't have it both ways.
They can't say to the United States, look, we want to consult with you and all that sort of thing in terms of NATO and arms and defense and the rest.
But economically, we're going to go our own way.
We'll just build our barriers and go to hell.
That's not going to work.
This is the greatest challenge to our statesmanship right now, is how we work on this new relationship with Western Europe.
I think it's a precarious decision.
As I said, I'm thinking much more than I've ever spent a lot of time thinking about.
I went over to this Amsterdam meeting, I don't know just why,
But I've got very much in mind.
I see a good many of the old jurors and the key is still coming through.
And I've had very good contact with the British.
The French are a little bit on the loose as far as I'm concerned.
But I'm feeling that we've got to have some high-level group thinking about this thing in terms of the new program, the new relationship.
Because if it drifts, it's going to drift away.
The trend is going to be to the east.
with the solid encasement of the GDR and the Soviet Union, with this agitation of non-existent Western Europe.
You've got to have a new image of the United States and a new image of the partnership.
One of the things that I think that money has come over here recently, and I've been wanting to talk to you about this.
I was not opposed to you.
Well, I called years ago.
Well, I called years ago, and I was out of office.
He's coming in to see me, and I was going to propose to you that I could take it.
You know, I was his lawyer when he first got out of law school.
He lived over here.
He was an American citizen.
And I had only two wars and everything else.
And he's got his obsession.
He couldn't have gotten any of it.
He subsidized him, of course, and supported him when he united Europe and the
But he always fights back on the concept of partnership with America.
He'll talk to you and he'll just tell you, look, look, you're only going to get the same damn harass that you were in before if you don't stress this note.
He's absolutely blind on this.
He was so impressed with the strength of the United States and how weak Europe was.
or against the United States, but now there's an entirely different challenge that's emerging, and it's a new relationship that's got to be built up, and it's got to be built up with conscious effort.
And he's on the wrong track, because he said, he was talking about putting up some surcharges the other day against the United States, because, for God's sake, it was not a state's ministry.
It doesn't make any sense, but he's...
He's been so obsessed with the success of the United Europe that he couldn't have gotten the first base hit because we supported it throughout the very first place of subsidizing.
And he's glum shy, still, of the role the United States can play in which the equivalent chance to the freshman would be cutting off his head.
Well, I've always wondered whether he and the gold man, they were arguing about the best
But I think that element, that element, that element would be used to be the big opponent of the gold.
You understand what I mean?
Yeah, when I saw it, I had, I think it was six or seven years ago, I had a very, and this is, you know, it all ends, you don't see many people, and that occasion, Monaghan, somebody, I don't actually know about it, but I don't want to see Monaghan, and I don't want to talk about it.
And then the gold is,
I briefly said, he said, I changed my mind.
He said, what did he say about something?
He said, he's wrong.
Just like that, he's wrong.
And then he told me what was wrong.
But it was a fascinating day to see the two of them on the same day.
Well, this is a known period, it seems to me.
Right.
If you could give us, for example,
thoughts to where we ought to go.
I mean, sometimes you can lob it in because, believe me, we're not just going to react to events.
We're going to try to shape events now.
We must shape the events.
And I had a problem shaping the events in Europe.
They are infinitely greater than they were after World War II.
Then we were so big and they were so weak.
We could do it, but no more.
Also, thank you to a group of
The statesmen were still thought to be local citizens.
Yeah, I'm sorry, did I get that right there?
No, you didn't.
Well, we're now keeping Jetson, but Papadu's appointment is going to take it in terms of the birth and arrest.
Sure, go ahead.
Mr. Chairman, I've got a handle on the accomplishment here.
Well, it's good to talk to you.
Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Look, there's a lot already coming out.
I'm not going to have any weird...
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What happened was that Kyrgyz of Rajas, Rajas transmitted it through the Paris channel.
They accepted this endorsement.
Now they hadn't accepted.
So I told Rajas, first of all, to send Kyrgyz and Paris to say that it transmitted and that it doesn't mean it's an endorsement.
You told me that the problem is that I've got to listen to your mom, huh?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And I'll take care of it.
Now that I know what's happening in the last two days, I'll take care of it, and I'll try to see another way.
No, I don't mind.
I'm here for about four or five years now.
I don't care what you want to get with this.
I don't want to bring it up because I just think it's wrong for him to go forward and say they shouldn't have a chance.
I mean, I would have loved to have a chance, and I guess that's the thing.
Well, if you would be terribly moved by the conversation, and you would realize, as you realized before,
I think what we ought to do, Mr. President...
I think we ought to get them outside next week.
Because we're getting the prisoners back this week.
on Wednesday and Friday, so I think we should get this Sunday, from Sunday on.
When's the next, when's the 30th?
Tomorrow, tonight.
All right, all right, all right.
That's it from this Sunday.
Oh, that's fine.
This coming Sunday and Monday, then as soon as I left town,
or have significant targets that he can hit.
Well, he says, the thunder, the thunder, on the old train track, when he just left.
The deployment.
Nothing to do with the 52s in that area.
The 52s, the fact that they might come back and scare these bastards to death, that's what, that was the thing that Dan said.
No.
He says, let me check with him, but they ought to be 50 to 50.
Because these bastards,
It's not so essential now.
It's just a warning to them of how you react when you get pushed.
And it will affect their decisions next November.
And then after the prisoners are back, I think we should let this all in.
We've seen some of it build up in the case on the action.
Death can wait until then.
Of course, I suppose all it looks like is after we've gone all this way, we bring what we call an honorable peace.
There is no peace if that's what it means or what it means.
I don't deserve an honorable peace.
I don't know about what I mean.
That's why I did it last night.
Are they going to continue doing this?
I don't know.
Only, I think they're going to have to make sure that I'm strong.
They are testing all the time.
They think they can get away with it.
There will be no one who wins.
I think if you rattle their teeth now, you're running a risk.
But my judgment of these bastards is that the only thing, they may be doing it only until April 1st until our prisoners die.
The other thing that is even more important than we had done before, so that those who can't see why, at least they know,
He drove you several times so that you didn't want to have a problem.
I don't care if he drove you wrong or that.
There's something wrong with him.
He's a little bit wounded.
He never could get out of bed.
He's a nice one.
He's just a good boy.
Yes.
Well, he's a very nice guy.
He's never, he's a good guy.
What was he?
Nobody.
Anybody.
Anybody.
Anybody.
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
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Good to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you.
How are you
All right, get away from it.
You did a good job.
I would be a wife of an ambassador or foreign service person to see what it is for employment.
I have a bottle of iced tea, just with pineapples, especially here, or coffee, Coca-Cola.
I have an honest iced tea, too.
Would you like it with the pineapples?
Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, sweet, just with the pineapples.
Okay, fine.
Oh, that's good.
Thank you.
Well, I mean, how you been?
You just about to swear at me.
I've had a case with this damn shingles.
You ever had one of those?
Oh, I've been to the ring.
You know, I mean, is it in here?
It goes away.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
Certainly.
Yes.
What the heck is it?
Just go away.
Just go away.
It goes away.
I don't know.
They said that I can't find it.
It's nerve antigen.
That's what they said, yeah.
But it said...
Boy, it was hell.
It burns me up.
Yeah.
It's effective.
It's effective.
Power.
Well, uh...
Let me say that I was thinking, I was telling Henry before you came in, that I'm sure you know your activities in the, in the arms control area, of course, must have been quite frustrating.
Frustrating not because we can't even get the damn committee set up.
And I don't want to get, or can't, when I think we'll write an approving body.
But beyond that,
But I think you should know that during these first four years, there were really three men that I felt that from time to time wanted to meet.
You know, like who's advising on something, who's writing a letter or something that I didn't think it was worth.
I mean, both two are gone now.
I mean, I thought I appreciated that because the things you gave on
I think sometimes you may wonder if this, what you do in a formal way, which seems to be so frustrating,
But I don't remember any deals the same way because I know he's sitting here far off.
And it's just important that we have some guys around that you don't have to, you don't have to throw on the map how to understand what's going on.
Right?
So that's just, that's on your kudo attention.
That is true, that's true.
And I was thinking, how many presents do you provide?
Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson.
That's right.
Let me just give you a little thought.
I don't want you to think that I feel frustrated because I put in my letter suggesting that you accept my resignation on this committee.
But the thing I thought about a good bit,
I've been around a long time.
I started this thing with the Kennedy administration.
It was 12 years.
I set up the first agency.
He called me in and said, McCoy, I can't put this legislation through.
Johnson told me that I mustn't take a risk on it.
It's too early in my administration and I can't put it on my bus list.
But he said, if you can get it through, it's more of a priority.
Well, I've had the legislation through, and I set up the agency.
I'm the first one since that time.
But I had more or less two committees that's been passed, too.
I do have some vigor and some strength.
But there comes a time when you've got your bulk.
Sure.
And then you don't tenuate your experience or anything like that.
And I just came to the conclusion that now that phase two, or sol two, coming along, a new phase, a new phase is necessary.
A new approach is necessary.
Then it was time to get some bigger and a new start on it.
I've enjoyed it, it's been interesting, but recently I've been feeling that there are other things that really gratify my mind and attention more than the specifics of the disarmament of arms control.
I'm worried about the whole position of the United States.
shifts and influences on power balance and the situation of Western Europe and so forth, I believe them all.
I see a good many people that come through and I sense that there's a movement and I'm very concerned about that and I find that my doctor patients are going to move around in that direction and I thought, well, with the limited amount of time that you have perhaps, I might be doing something
It's more geared into my own thinking.
I'm not talking in terms of government positions.
Sure.
I'm talking about my own track of patience.
And I felt that, I mean, we've always indicated, let me be sure I understand how public government .
I don't know.
I don't know what the hell's going to happen today.
I'm not, Henry and I have been doing an awful lot of talking about, well, not just Henry and I, others too, and I share your consent about the ship, the powerhouse here.
Thank God we're almost there.
And if they had done that, that would have gone to the left.
Is there a way to go up in that way in Germany?
The German thing?
Right here.
To the left.
That was Martin.
and really all the extreme left-wing enemies of ours are now pushing us to be in unity as a means to get at us.
And it's not, it's not quite that Europe is going to fight in the partnership with the United States.
No, no, no.
That's, that's, I'll be the president and I'll talk about it this weekend, which is totally different from when they did it.
The point is, the point is that, Jack, we've got to look, we've got to consider whether or not European unity, and again, this is only in Israel, because I'm going to say the same funny stuff all the time, European unity,
as we've always supported through the years, is not our interest.
I'm not sure.
This is the situation of the left in the SPD, you know, the old German business, twice alien land, East-West, never comes to rest, Bismarckian, but now this DDR solidating case in there together with a very active...
And what they're saying to Grant is that the way to get Germany unified is to show that they can work with the Russians better.
And the only thing they could do with the Russians is to move away from it.
Well, strange, strange.
This is what I, this is the thing that I'm referring to.
One of my drafts for patients, which rather takes my thinking up, rather than to continue, I think, with this, with the arms, specific to the arms control and this arm.
What would you do with the arms control?
Well, it's a problem right here, as I was saying, we...
The usefulness of an advisory committee's office will be the first to critique and second to fill the sign and the rest.
But this is such a highly technical matter involving negotiations of extreme sensitivity that it isn't all that easy to go and sit down and say, well, this is what we're going to do.
That's one of the problems we've got, particularly the second phase, even more than the first, I think.
Well, one of the things I want to talk about is the future of the committee, how you reconstitute it, how you get past this impasse of full rights, how the committee ought to be composed, what you can do with it to make it effective, viable.
I've had some ideas about who should see me as chairman, and perhaps a reconstitution of the committee.
I think that, however you like to look over that group that you nominated there,
I'm not so sure that we ever want to continue one at the present time.
We've got two or three more resignations that are serious resignations in terms of the present membership.
And how you would constitute it, will you put it in charge of the thing, is a real problem.
I'm having as much blood, sweat, and tears as I have.
I'd like to see it fade away.
I did have some concepts about how I could do it.
Well, I'll give you several suggestions.
One, I think, is Bill Scranton.
Another I thought of was if...
He's on the committee.
He's on the committee.
I suggest to you every some time back that they maybe go to think about David Packer going on the committee.
And maybe...
The great guy at the law has to be seen.
How much more justice is he doing?
You would be good for Whitney.
You'd be good.
You'd be good.
I think you'd be very good.
And you'd make a lot of respect.
And maybe he'd be a good chairman.
There's another thought that crossed my mind.
I think that he had more and more, a little more doubtful of the effectiveness of Bill Foster on the committee.
He's got himself in line with these other organizations, the Skoll organization.
He's become something of a propagandist.
Well, I have a question about his usefulness on the committee.
And I'm wondering whether you could replace him with Jerry Smith.
He was a former head of the agency.
Jerry Smith was a former head of the agency.
Jerry Smith put in a lot of work in the team today.
He commanded considerable effect.
And he's a pretty analytical fellow.
He doesn't get too much of a grevenitis.
It's a...
But he's a good judge of man.
How about getting somebody like yourself, well let's put it this way.
Is there anybody that is somewhat out of the establishment?
Or do you have to go around the establishment?
I don't guess the establishment.
I mean for that sometimes you need a voice.
Maybe it's just too hard to get somebody to understand it.
It's pretty complicated.
It's too complicated.
I suppose.
I think it might be good.
Packard.
Packard.
Oh, what about Packard?
Exactly what I'm thinking.
I think he'd be interested.
He always did his homework when he came to our meetings.
He was always there and seemed to be very much into it.
Never, never, never does it.
I read up his show, and he was meticulous in preparing himself.
A lot of great time with Howard.
I don't know how...
much, uh, intuitiveness, uh, Scranton's got.
Scranton has a, has a...
He tends to be a little bit, uh, I mean, I love him and I haven't said anything about it.
He's done great.
We've never been able to get a bill to take any single child.
And on this case, I just don't know whether it's...
He's got a mind and heart, and he's got a good brain.
And he's got bigger.
He's got the other names.
I don't think I'd make Jerry Smith chairman of the committee.
No, he shouldn't be chairman.
He's too tired of what we've already done.
Well, but his children, is he better than Fosner's?
Yes, that's right.
And that he may talk too much?
Yes, he goes and propagandizes, he makes the speech so often.
All over town.
All over town.
And he's, I'm paranoid, I would think.
So far as, who else have you got?
If you had somebody on the committee, I can't think of one.
He's one of them.
He's very good.
That's a sharp thought of mine.
I was thinking, Henry, with Duke, when I kind of watch, I don't like that people, I just don't know if that's the kind of group
I think it requires to sit down and become acquainted with this terribly complex subject in order to do the good.
You've got to catch somebody with some strength, I think.
somebody to keep those prima donnas in line at their level.
MIT.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
What do you do with that right now?
Yes, of course, because he's so much involved with the MIT group.
The kids are getting off.
I think he is.
But I think he's up in that Cambridge atmosphere.
That's right.
As a man trained in that area, he knows the weapons.
He knows the weapons, but I don't think that activates our reflexes.
I was always playing along with that.
I was always aware that he was talking.
He talked to Doty about that.
Well, he talked to you because he was trying to advocate a point of view.
You know, I was very interested in reading, you know, on leaves.
You probably didn't know much, but I was reading a recent book about what happened in that, you know, the, I think it was the time that they changed and so forth.
And I was shocked to find that
That, in other words, whether they should have done it or not and so forth is always a question.
How it was done is only open criticism.
But in any event, once the president had made the decision, I thought he would do nothing.
But one day, according to this, and this apparently was born out of what he was talking about, Chester Bowles, who was the undersecretary of state, was sitting in charge.
And some papers came across the desk.
indicating that such an operation was being planned.

Nixon, Kissinger & McCloy on Arms Control Advisory Committee

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