Nixon & Kissinger on Foreign Policy and Watergate

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

Good morning.

Hi, Henry, how are you?

Good.

Yes.

Yes, I did last night.

How did it go?

Good, go ahead.

You'll be leaving when?

I'm leaving Tuesday night.

We are putting off the foreign policy report.

giving it to the press.

The formal release is tomorrow.

And I wonder, we could do two things for your participation.

We could have a signing ceremony where you sign the letter of France medal.

If you wanted to, we could have a five-minute radio speech if you wanted to do that.

Tomorrow or today?

Tomorrow.

Sure.

Okay.

Tomorrow is the release day.

Tomorrow.

All right.

And let's do it.

Let's do both.

Why not?

I think, yes, I just didn't want to put...

So now you're working up on getting prices to work out?

Yeah.

Maybe that'll do the drafting.

I mean, your people do the drafting, pricing, cleaning up for me and all that.

Sure.

Okay.

All right.

That's good.

That's a good report.

It's a good report, yeah.

It took us a long time to agree.

Well, we've had to do it.

We got sodden much later this year.

We had the war.

We didn't really get sodden until the end of February.

That's right.

Good, good, good.

Well, I go back to this report maybe this weekend, and you leave Saturday for Moscow.

Thursday night.

Huh?

Thursday night at midnight.

Well, Thursday you arrived at Saturday.

I arrived there Saturday.

Well, I arrived Friday night.

I began working Saturday.

What all were you working on?

Well, I was working on this nuclear treaty.

We have about five bilateral agreements.

I'm going to see Packard in the morning, did you know?

Yeah.

I'm trying to make a sale there in the Philippines.

If he has a stock run, then we'll need senators.

I know.

Whatever.

Bill Rogers is working in the Senate.

He's already talked to him about the legal side of it.

So I sent him down there.

That's good.

I don't have any senators, but I know there's two.

He's working on a new man's field.

He says he thinks they seem to be favorable.

Good.

Anything else that Vietnam seems to be about to say?

Well, they are raising a few difficulties now about the meeting I was supposed to have, but I'm not all that eager to have it myself because we can't threaten.

Oh.

We can't really threaten them very effectively with bombs and everything.

But, uh... Tell me what that means, then.

I think, I think that's Rod.

No, Rod just doesn't know a thing about any of these agreements, and...

He doesn't want to solve them.

Well, he doesn't know about what I'm doing, that's all.

He just knows that we are negotiating.

He isn't going to be worried about solving them.

You know what I mean?

No, he isn't.

Your problem is solving them, not solving them.

He's a hard worker.

There's nothing to be concerned about there.

When this quiets down, I think it's important to work out some arrangement where we're not at the mercy of the bureaucracy suddenly dumping on us that they didn't know anything.

But we can go through.

Yeah, but you should have, you've got to work out an arrangement.

We can't have Roger's leave now.

We cannot do that right in the middle of this.

It would have to be very bad.

Anybody.

So I would say that if you work out, you know, we all have to work out the live and let live for a while.

nobody knows

I'm sure, John.

I, of course, didn't know that Ehrlichman had people working on this.

I mean, I didn't know that Hunt and Liddy existed at the time.

But, I mean, I knew Ehrlichman was conducting an investigation.

But I didn't know how he was going to do it.

But, oh, it's a tragic situation.

If this were Kennedy and his office, they'd all be going the other way.

I mean, one forgets now the atmosphere when 10,000 government documents are stolen.

We had to get out of here.

You are in an emergency situation.

That's right.

Yeah.

Well, frankly, Henry, I'll do the same thing.

They steal some incidental because you don't need to get back to spending, I mean.

You know, Ehrlichman never told me what he was doing on any of these.

Doesn't make any difference.

No, no, I don't.

I mean, no.

That's fine.

No, no, you don't run away from a guy.

I don't run away from it.

Of course he did something.

We didn't want to know.

But I knew he was conducting an investigation in each case.

Correct.

He said, for God's sakes, find out.

Yeah, the Indian tax, I don't know if it was that one.

I don't know.

I know they got him out of Washington.

Well, I think, in retrospect, one mistake was that our guys always had so many people involved that they were totally vulnerable to any one guy cracking or leaking.

And I think it makes a difference in the public estimate whether you are investigating leaks or whether you're doing it for what seems to be political purposes.

People want leaks investigated.

So I don't, and it's not anybody ever has to see it, but you're like we were investigating leaks.

And we are continuing to.

Oh, yes.

Be sure to take that with anybody.

Oh, no question.

We have to.

No question.

And the State Department.

Johnson's investigating them all the time.

Kennedy's investigating them.

And so do we.

Why can't we?

I must say, it's too late now.

Elliot worries me.

He's going to be very ambitious.

He's not going to be out.

I mean, the presidency, I know it's all very well to say that he should have a free hand.

But you should give a free hand only to somebody who is wise enough to use it.

And...

I just don't know.

From what I've seen of Elliot in defense... Elliot is out for himself.

He sure is.

Elliot will not necessarily agree that the major objective has to be to keep it away from the presidency, because all these guys have a high incentive to stump it on somebody.

Well...

True or not?

I mean, it doesn't have to be true.

How can one defend oneself?

Sure.

Well, don't be discouraged, Elliot.

I am not discouraged.

Elliot is a game player, aren't they?

And I talked to him.

I'm going to talk to him very frankly.

And that's just got to let go of the idea of letting appear Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.

They're criminals.

The FBI is standing there in the hallway.

I couldn't believe that.

I couldn't believe it.

How would you like somebody standing in front of your desk with all your papers?

You were going to sneak them out in the middle of the night.

Christ, they were going to sneak these papers out of this place.

There shouldn't have been any FBI agency outside the door or inside the place.

People who were your most trusted associates, if they couldn't be trusted to go out of here with dignity, one should have taken the chance.

I'd hate to think that we even got out of here.

I'm afraid, though, that that was not Elliot.

Now, that sort of thing Elliot won't do.

What Elliot will do

is to try to have the investigation conducted in such a way that he's denied his shining armor.

I mean, he won't do petty stuff.

Well, the gimmick in it, I guess what that was, that was a gimmick.

That was a gaudy little move.

But you see, the point is that it not only affected, and I got very involved in affecting the whole White House, the White House on the street with the FBI watching the White House,

In the name of Christ they were thinking of, I don't know.

God damn, I just couldn't believe it.

I'd better go put somebody else in that garment position.

Your garment's great, and I'll work with Indians in this matter.

He doesn't have to judge.

He's too emotional.

He is too emotional.

Great guy, great guy.

A fine man, but he's a... And he's loyal to you.

Totally loyal.

Wonderful, wonderful.

But what I mean is, you do not do things...

emotional way my goodness you remember that most of the calls we're now having to rely on we're not with us on cambodia work with us i have no doubt mr president you're surviving i have no question whatever

I think when this inquires down a little bit, you might consider making assistance a little more available to Congress just to blunt the attack.

Assistance like you?

Yes.

Sure.

I don't have an interest in it.

Sure.

I'm just wondering how we could get into a more offensive posture.

Don't try it right now.

I won't do anything.

What I meant is, when I say, I'm not speaking to you personally, but any of us,

Well, I don't know.

Yes, yes.

There's no reason not to see members of Congress.

But I like Stennis and people like that.

That's very important.

Well, I'll be out for two weeks anyway, more or less.

Boy, when you come back, you're going to see them quite regularly.

I see no reason not to.

I really screwed this fellow Parney, Mr. President.

He...

I just...

The Swede.

Prince Bernard is holding a conference in Sweden every year.

Not in Sweden, but...

a conference of European and American leaders every year.

But it was going to take place in Sweden this year, and I had agreed to come six months ago with no... just thinking, if I were in Europe anyway, I might go up there.

And never canceled my participation.

So the Swedish foreign minister called in our charge and said it would be very unfortunate if I came under these conditions and with the feelings

even though it's a private conference.

So I took this and sent it to Prince Bernhardt and used it as an excuse to cancel my participation.

I said, under these conditions, I can't come.

So Bernhardt is now canceling the conference and taking it out of Sweden.

Ah!

That's a small thing.

It's a minute thing.

It doesn't mean a thing.

Right.

Well, you have anything else you need to come?

Yes, this is the one that we discussed.

Yes, my lord.

My lord, I'm all for it.

Option two, three.

If you don't want to solve it, you've got to get rid of it.

You've got to get rid of it.

Here we go.

I will then arrange a sign to that one.

And the signing ceremony is fine.

And the five minutes.

Let me say, let's arrange it.

Don't announce it today or anything.

We'll do it in the morning depending upon what we want, how we feel in the morning.

You can figure that we'll be a signing ceremony and we'll either, we'll have an event with your staff.

And if not, we feel like we'll have to press it.

And prepare me five minutes so that I can go with it to you.

Right.

That means our options open.

Right.

Open.

Okay, good.

Otherwise, there really isn't anything else.

Seasplier, actually, they have, uh, they have, uh, uh, Clyde the Diamond there.

I noticed, uh, that they at least aren't getting any more.

the screws, and they must have thought that the next thing would be a little clouded.

Now with Watergate, we've sort of, we've kept it at the present tension, but we haven't kept turning the screws as we normally would.

But I don't think we should give the Congress another chance to do it.

I agree, sure.

No, there's a time and place for everything.

I wouldn't question it.

Now, if we can maneuver this into the rainy season in Cambodia, which is actually only six weeks away.

Six weeks, right.

First of June.

Oh, that first 15th of June.

Well, first of July, actually.

Well, it starts rainy.

Yeah, well, the direction of summit is actually pretty well set for the 18th of June now.

Yeah.

Sure.

Oh, sure, sure.

So we'll let him come Saturday night.

That's right.

It's the place where we can keep him quiet.

That's right.

He'll love being there.

He'll love going back there.

And I'll go back with him.

And then you'll go back with him on Wednesday.

Good.

No, anything like that.

There's no problem.

Good.

And I'll do something for him.

It's inclement if he wants.

Oh, that's the accounting.

All right.

And I'll go to the Russian embassy.

And do it.

And that doesn't.

Well, their idea, Mr. President, is that we sign the nuclear treaty and dissolve part here in Washington before they go out to the West Coast and maybe have the dinner the evening that you sign it, the dinner at the Russian embassy.

Because then you can have a bigger, then they can make really perfect toast.

I can have a celebration on it.

I've got the Germans lined up on the nuclear treaty, and I've got the British lined up now.

I've got to work on the French.

Right.

You know, it's really unquestionable for Percy to reflect on Hillary Richardson that way by saying,

How the hell do you know if you ever have an independent investigation?

If I appoint him, hell, Christ, the White House man, it's better than Richardson do it, you know?

Your problem with Richardson won't be lack of independence.

There'll be plenty of independence, I know.

Well, that's what I thought I'd tell you.

Well, it could be.

But Richardson also is a very bold politician.

He's going to realize a few things, too, before this is over.

Does the word turn, Henry?

Never fails to turn.

Oh, I have no question, Mr. President.

This is still up in the patch now.

Sure.

Public sympathy is going to turn.

Sure.

Okay, well...

I thought your speech was really very...

I thought last night was...

Nixon & Kissinger on Foreign Policy and Watergate

AI Summary

Audio

Transcript (AI-generated)

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 2, 1973

Cite this conversation