Conversation 913-005

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

Hi, how are you?

Good to see you.

I've been long today.

How are you?

Good to see you.

Well, this is the building, isn't it?

Let's sit over here.

Where'd you get this?

um

Thank you.

I don't know.

Paul Parker says, it was unheard of to take a little beer a few chapters ago.

Don't worry, he's not a stewardess.

Those of you who want to say that we had the group here, plus Senator Peirce was in that delegation, and on our way over, we did receive a message here concerning the Jackson Amendment, which left us a little bit in a position where we weren't exactly sure what we were going to run into, whether we should bring it up or not.

um let me say to you personally i've said this for the record i think that you've performed a real miracle and i congratulate you

Because it's why I don't have the normalcy to have a personal relationship with the president as well as an official relationship, which is beyond anything I could anticipate.

And I, Bob said, which I did say.

Go ahead, I want to read it to you.

I'll take it.

Go take it.

The last part is, we'll raise it to Mr. President at the very beginning.

It says, Mr. Secretary General, we are a bipartisan group.

We are Republicans and Democrats.

The President makes it an hour, President, and we support him.

And I invite you all to set the tone for the vote meeting.

That's when Griffin said, I wish I had a tape recorder.

Your leadership and that of President Nixon will be praised not only in your lifetimes, but for generations to come for his contributions to peace.

And Griffin said, please convey not only an account of our being on behalf of your colleagues and myself, but my very best wishes for Lawrence and for President Nixon.

And several times in this 3 hour and 40 minutes.

He asked us to wait two minutes.

First of all,

I think he took over our business after about the first day we were there.

And an interpreter, for me to go a couple of times, did correct interpretation.

I told Peter a while ago, I wasn't too sure whether he corrected what Rez just said, or whether he corrected what the interpreter had said.

Oh, that's Troy Hoskins.

Troy Hoskins.

Yeah.

He's brilliant.

Oh, here he is.

He catches the game.

Troy Hoskins, I was touching him this year in Washington.

Oh, we did.

I did.

Yeah.

Friend's school.

Is that right?

I used to.

I didn't know.

He was not the interpreter at the time I was there on my trip this last year.

He wasn't there tonight.

The very last year was the interpreter at the bridge show.

Came over at the bridge show.

He's one of their, he's basically had such a story.

You know, you mentioned the bi-part of the thing, I'd rather remind you of it, but it's very interesting.

Comments from Churchill, right?

uh, conversations with Churchill and Stalin.

Uh, and here we call Churchill and Stalin, and, uh, Churchill had a potential to, for the next general election, as we call it.

And everybody in the world, except those who were in Britain, thought Churchill was not a winner.

The war was over, and it was the Churchill and all of us, and Stalin, and Churchill and the consulate in the war, uh, Stalin.

Not for use of the empty parts.

I'll tell you in two parts.

He says one part is higher.

One part is better.

Mr. President, let me tell it quickly.

In fact, to take your respect, I have two black bracelets.

I went to see the president of the Supreme Soviet.

All right.

And I asked him, I asked him, I guess, is there any dissent with him, the Supreme Soviet, about the matter of exchange of trade with the United States?

The fellow looked sort of blind.

He said, you talked to Secretary General Reagan this morning.

He said,

He said, well, Secretary General Dreyfus speaks for the Politburo, he speaks for the Supreme Soviet, he speaks for the people of Russia.

Yeah, I'm impressed.

You look pretty good.

You have good color.

You're not moldy in there, too, but you look great.

Looking forward, of course, to his trip here.

At the present time, he's here.

He's in Moscow.

And we'll be in charge, what did you say?

Thursday night.

Tomorrow.

I'm just expecting to see him.

But, uh, the, uh, the talks are going well.

But, uh, it's, uh, if they believe me, they're, uh, well, well, the Russians are very gracious, and they're, uh, they receive very good negotiations on things like salt.

And, uh, well, trade, you know, it's, it's, it's a quick little business, and they're, they're tough.

They're, they're anxious, though.

I said, they heard of that.

You don't say, I got it.

Did you all just have a crush?

They won.

One thing that I noticed is that they really resented us and had different meaning to us.

I said, will you lead?

My God, they don't want to.

They don't mean anything.

We are self-sufficient.

I need a cup of coffee.

I mean, it's a different meaning.

I didn't mean to express a desperate need.

They really are self-conscious about that, almost completely defensive in their approach on that.

You're terribly sensitive, aren't they, about that?

about, you know, how great they are and the rest.

The Chinese are just the opposite.

Seriously.

They have so much self-confidence.

Even though the Chinese, of course, in terms of their own economic involvement, are light years behind the Russians at this point.

But the Chinese are always, never fail to mention, even though they're very confident.

The Russians, on the other hand,

The Russians, on the other hand, are very, very sensitive about this.

They never want to be number two.

They never like to say, well, we eat trade, or we eat wheat, or that would be the other thing.

They want to be a marketer, equal.

Well, they throw up this defense.

They have a sort of inferiority feeling, and they throw up this argument.

I think so.

I've been there before, two times.

Right.

And going back, it hasn't changed very much.

The physical conditions have changed quite a bit.

The streets are full of automobiles now.

Oh yeah, I can see a great change from that.

People are closer, better dressed.

The food is good.

You know, it's still just big potatoes, but it's good food.

Even the salami for breakfast.

And besides, we're the gremlins.

We have a book tip and a brandy on there too, besides the cup of coffee.

I think they are changing.

They're getting more consumer goods, but they're still way, way behind.

But they wouldn't miss for anything at all.

Well, you know what you saw in our...

Put us in there.

Americans were terribly proud in our early years, and we didn't like to admit that we were inferior.

If you read the history of the 19th century, you know, and so forth, the Americans, you know, they actually didn't like the British, and the rest of them had done as well.

And one of the things that we all got to remember in articles with all nations,

is that we as the great power and the richest and strongest and so forth, whether it be because we don't have the full humility, but we must always, of course, show the greatest respect for the areas where they are better, as selfish as they are, or where they are equal.

But always, never show any way of taking them around, or superiority where they're inferior, because of the game they play.

I mean, in the relations between, in the relations we have,

And we've got to remember that even with these people, with all the matters that we have negotiated with them, that for now it's a business deal.

There will be no sign.

I mean, I don't mean by that that a lot of people will not be pleasant.

All the rest of it, don't you have a feeling that you really got down for it until the next time?

It's a business deal.

It's not going to be based on the fact that, well, for example, Gresham and I have walked very well.

in their crisis to the first person, why they are the first person to be arrested for fraud.

But I wouldn't want to have you follow something that I consider, or that they consider, that the personal relationship is what is going to solve any problems.

Let me put it this way.

Having a bad personal relationship would mean that you'd have no chance of solving it, but you'd never get to talk to it.

So having a good relationship, it means that we get to the point that we can sit down and think, that just means that you're up there where you agree to play.

In other words, we agreed to play the game.

But then the question is, what cards we got, and what cards they got, and how we'll play.

But they're interested in, and they specifically mentioned co-assistance, long-term,

He said 30 years a couple times.

And he doesn't want a 40-year deal.

In other words, they are looking.

Now, I've gathered that this is pretty top-level.

That man should have all been there.

He didn't expect that.

My boss with him was still expressing the old Cold War line.

Remember that?

A lot of them now.

A lot of them haven't gotten the message.

I'm not sure which it is.

The rest is a perfect movie.

Apparently, he credits you with that because he used the word hugely advantageously when he discussed the trade issues.

But he talked about the fact that as a result of your initiatives with him, you've been able to put ideological differences behind us, recognize we have ideological differences.

And they'll always exist, but go and proceed from that basis.

Proceed from the basis of explaining that we're going to get along, and we're going to do business together.

We're going to make better rules as a result of that.

And of course, it has helped enormously.

And it's happened since I was there.

That is, of course, the end of the war.

Now, that is still a very hot problem, not in the sense that Soviet restraint is very important in that part of the world.

Mr. President, there's one thing I'd like to kind of just follow on from what Mr. Bell said.

I think, raised to have clarity, feels this way.

And I think, for Miko Osamu, I expect that he's got that pretty well under control.

The American embassy indicated, and I think it's entirely accurate, that this is a negative country mile.

On this matter, expanded trade will cause relations with the United States.

In his trip, for example, here, well, let's put it this way.

We must not have this get out publicly, but you should all know here that this trip is very important to him.

for his political leadership.

There wasn't a single young man, and I asked that from, say, 40 or 45 in town, that I saw in any of our meetings.

The one thought that occurred to me was, Brezhnev's got the control, he's got the whole ball of lights, he's number one, and everybody's saying, so we're all young people.

And they're bound to be there, but they're totally excluded from every group we talk to.

It made me wonder whether or not there's something going on with that.

There wasn't a single young person.

While you were there, there were stories here that the professor had consolidated his relationship.

That sounds like a man trying to convince somebody, though.

I don't think so.

You just never know in that system who's going to be on the first line.

I was just going to say that he's going to be on the first line by the time he gets here.

I just think you've got this on the stacks.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

I did think that a problem that somebody ought to try to figure out some type of wording because I think Jackson is going to proceed and I think he's going to have to figure out some way to maybe

Why don't we report to the president?

Why don't you report to him?

I guess because he went through the bit about this is an internal policy in our country, and a very sensitive one.

He seemed to be restraining himself.

He almost, he through-tested him once or twice, but he couldn't catch himself then.

pull back but he he finally said he had a lot of statistics a lot of papers prepared for questions and said that the explanation that the bus was there wasn't a legislative tax it was a regulation and said that as far as they were concerned there is not now the education tax and there will not be in the future and this is one of the things that i speak for myself and i speak for vote gordon

and the Supreme Soviet.

So he made perfectly clear that they don't have this tax anymore.

And as far as they're concerned, there's no need for the Jackson Amendment.

As far as they're concerned.

He said only about the normal fee, and you questioned a little bit about that.

Yes.

So I asked him what he meant.

He said, other than the normal fees.

And I said, what do you mean by the normal fees?

And he said, well, the administrative processes, you know, the administrative matters.

As part of the debate earlier, it certainly came through that they intend to let the Jews come out and kill them.

I'm saying you talk about hard bargaining.

He was prepared for this question.

He had a briefing paper on his table that he had asked for.

And all the details, I mean, this was not a surprise.

This was where I thought we were going back now and we could tell our individual basis.

We can't do much publicly because the act is not to quote a book, but individual basis at least.

Let me tell you why I think it's a state here.

What we are, we're in fact, as far as the Jackson Amendment is concerned, there are eight senators on it.

Seventy-seven.

It's on their long asses today.

Yeah.

I mean, wait.

The Jackson Amendment would be people to the House, not senators.

I suppose it is.

The question is, what do you think that's going to do?

In my view, knowing that if you say it's conditional, it doesn't see the next time, it doesn't just deal with it.

And if you put yourself in their position, they can destroy their system.

Not in your life.

The problem that you have here is that they, not only because of pride and the fact that they do the eternal matter, but also because they could never, in my opinion, the Russian could never come here and say that, you know, I was able to negotiate with my most favored nation and so forth.

Binding by exceeding two.

That's exactly exactly what he said.

He said, when he was talking about the maternal matter, he said, what if we should put a condition on it?

You must have all five million people who are out of work back to work before this will be like something like that.

Or all black people living in Hawaii and stuff.

Yeah, that's right.

That's the problem with your head here.

And I put it very hard with Henry Jackson.

I could do it too soon.

and I talked to the Jewish leaders and I wanted to say the same to you because you called us in August to see how much is the state.

In my view, what you are risking here, if the Jackson Amendment goes on, what you are risking is the Soviet-American relationship

because there's a point that you cannot publicly force the Soviet leader to say, all right, I'll back down on this.

And you can't do that.

Now, the other point is, would you rather have a voice speaking, if you were speaking for the Jewish community,

Speaking with Russian, writing to Russian, talking to a native Indian, or on the outside.

Not just as cold turkey as that.

I remember, for example, before I went to China, I had a various, definitely very, a one senator expressed a very good chance of shipping the right thing with the Chinese unless they were released now.

Well, I couldn't condition my thoughts to show a line of racing down here.

I didn't.

But down here, I'll take them.

And if I hadn't had the time to join, he'd still be there.

The point that we've got to realize is that hundreds of thousands of Jews have been let out, or tens of thousands over the past year, and a lot more are going to be let out.

And we're going to have a great deal of influence on it.

And they have taken it.

very significant step on this.

And they've allowed us to say something publicly here, you know, which Jackson said this isn't enough, and which some of the Jewish leaders said this isn't enough, and so forth.

My thought is this.

What you thought was responsible, Senators, you've got to, you've got to, you've got to, I guess, as you evaluate the situation, is, are we going to, for example, risk

SALT II, which would be more important than SALT I, because there's a permanent limitation on what we are on this.

Are we going to risk trade?

Are we going to resist whatever endpoints we can have in the Soviet Union as far as some changes are concerned?

Are we going to resist even possibly our talking about public health committees because of the Jackson Act?

It would be a terrible mistake.

Let me put it this way.

As far as I am personally concerned, I am for what the Jackson men have said.

All of us are.

My God.

And personally, I didn't think of looking at Mr. Gresham and his colleagues.

I personally would be for them letting everybody out at one time.

They never did it twice.

You know, a lot of Ukrainians are looking after their children.

Ukrainians, Jews, Germans.

You know, they have been already so messed up.

The problem we've got here, you see, is that... is that...

I believe that the best way that we can really influence, have influence with the Russians, in behalf of the Jewish minority, and they deserve it.

They are put upon it.

The Jews, as we know, have been persecuted in every country they've been in.

Spain has been persecuted, but France did, and the British once did, and the Americans have, and they're good.

The Poles are of the worst, but you look at their virtue than today.

And so the Russians have it.

And they do.

But the thing we've got to remember is, do you want the President of the United States, not just this one, but the next one, to have some influence with whoever is the head of the Soviet Union in trying to get better treatment for them and getting them out?

Mark my words, you should pass the Jackson Amendment every now and then.

It's not, you can't let other people talk about that.

Now that's just a little tricky.

That's the way I look at it.

I mean, we said, I said, we're going to switch our perspective.

They asked me before I asked them to do something that the American embassy had, and we saw that she had.

If I thought that Jackson and I were going to destroy the opportunity to trade with the United States, and I was struggling for something to say, it was down in paper, or it did.

And what I said was I wasn't sure exactly how the trade bill in Jacksonville would finally emerge, but I was sure that we could find a mutually satisfactory solution.

Now that's a bunch of garbage, but it satisfied the test, which indicated to me in some way

that they aren't as concerned about the people of Jacksonland as they are with some face-saving modification of it.

Yes, sir.

What I was thinking, you see, if you can find a way to put the language, I don't put all the principles that you want on there, but you've got to leave an escape valve for terms of what the determination was on it.

or something like that, so that you see, so that you aren't, in fact, saying to the head of the Russians, hey, look here, boy, you quit kicking these poor Jews around.

Or whatever they had to do with him.

They will never take that.

That's exactly right.

And we wouldn't do it.

I respect you because you are a communist and I consider myself to be one.

I'm still a realist.

And he follows it, he follows it, and the rush is there, and the real question is, there is a change in our religion.

Oh, I don't think that they are still God, it is that we are still not God.

It's a hell of a lot better to be talking to him, to be negotiating with him, than to be glaring at him all around the world.

And that's what's involved here in this Jackson matter that follows us.

You can't just suddenly, you know what I mean, scoot and arrest him.

You've got all the bull before you.

But then the Senate will have to take upon its hands the responsibility for torpedoing this relationship.

I agree with that.

appealing to me and attractive, and I speak for myself only, but something that would be terribly attractive to me would be if you, that is, the White House or the State Department, could give us some suggestions on how far we have to go in changing that language that I've accepted from the Soviet Union.

I'm not surprised that the leadership of the Jewish community doesn't.

I raised the point from the Maryland region,

I think these people have gotten very, they're wild now.

I have a question.

They were very good.

Much more reasonable than our senators.

They got the other hand.

You've got to realize, we've got to bargain hard.

But you know, they've got a lot of big stake in here.

That's what they need.

That's

That's all the stuff.

What really is at fault?

I mean, it's your oil, and it's Israel, and it's Egypt and the rest.

But the Soviet Union and its attitude and its enormous importance as to whether or not Israel survives.

True.

All right.

What do they want?

My point is that what I'd like to do is to have us work to develop some language, which would be, you know, reasonable.

And then if you folks could help on it, it would be very helpful.

Because it is a good incident.

I don't want it to be a good incident.

But I know as far as the votes are concerned, the votes are all on the side of the vaccine.

I know as far as the peace of this world is concerned.

I don't know.

Well, President, I'd like to do a few observations that might be helpful because I had a little different situation.

I met a group of Jewish leaders over there after this.

They lost me in the park one evening after

after we had had our meeting with Brest, and I tried to discuss with them factually what the real situation was.

There were five of them that I met with.

All of them had, each one had applied for a visa to leave.

Each one of them had been turned down.

One had had it approved on one day and was getting already believed the next day and was disapproved.

of the five had lost their jobs, had immediately lost their jobs as a result of applying.

The fifth was employed by the Academy of Sciences as an academician, and therefore he was under the position that they could have to lose his job.

They weren't, those people were not concerned with the immigration tax at all.

The immigration tax is just something to talk about.

Right.

That was creating some problems and everybody thought if that's out of the way, everything would be fine.

Right.

But they were complaining about the harassment and the fact that they can't leave at all.

So they're not going into it in light of what the rest of us said.

I might have a situation concerning their currencies.

What have they been working in?

It turned out that each one of these five had been working on a job, either a job that involved security, or had been working where they had had a security clearance of some sort.

One of them had only had it for a year, as it had been a number of years, several years ago, but he had had a clearance.

And so this, it seemed to me, was maybe one of the reasons that they were turned down.

And so then I asked him, I said, how many people in the Jewish community

Do you think we're in your same category?"

And I believed them and did not.

They said, well, the ones that we have contact with, there are about 200.

So this is kind of impressive, because they're letting out 29,000, as the president said last year.

And they're going to let out a lot again this year.

They're obviously letting out a lot of people that are not involved in this sort of thing.

And I think it's good to keep this in context with them.

The press, after we left, I made no comments to anybody about my meeting, because I wanted to come back and give you the information on the person.

And I started getting calls from overseas that had been released back here by the Jewish community about my meeting with these people in the park on the scene.

And then beyond that, the month of the acquisition, the next day,

His son was the policeman who called his son into the service.

I made a big scratch in the paper about the fact that he was the boy who was called into the service.

Because his father had sent me to talk with these in the past, I don't know what the disposition is.

I have since been told several of these people have telephones that were connected at that time.

I've since been told now that the telephones have been disconnected in the context over here and not yet in touch with them.

But it seems to me that it's a plight of a rather small number, which may really be in all security matters, but we certainly wouldn't approve security risks if they wanted to immigrate someplace out of this country.

Let me suggest this.

One point we do have to remember is that

Well, I think Russia has gone as far as it can and survived, you know what I mean, on this issue.

Second, I totally agree, however, with Jackson and what you have just told me.

And there's that, and the Jewish leaders told me this, that they gave me instances after instances of harassment and so forth that did involve the exit penalty.

And I think you have that situation.

Third, I...

I, however, come back to the proposition that we have no better option.

I mean, what do we want to do?

Do we want to make some progress on the deal or not?

That's what it is.

And I don't think that the, I don't think that the Jackson Amendment, you lay that thing out there, if you talk to Gresham, what's he going to do?

If I, when he comes here, and I say, all right, we can talk about most favorite names, but here's this Jackson man who's gonna be out in New Orleans, and he'll be down to see me, and that would be the Foreign Relations Committee.

And you understand, it isn't gonna be personal or anything like that.

And I'm not suggesting that, I'm not suggesting that because of different

matter that we're going to have here, that our whole relationship is going to be spoiled forever and so forth, but I am suggesting it could be very greatly risked, because the issue is that a lot of this is a lot of something blown up, so in their mind, you see,

i think though the suggestion of trying to get somebody

All right.

We'll work on some language, you know, that would be proper.

I think you could sort of help on it.

I think it would be a great service.

I want you all to know that I want you all to know that I don't hear no illusions about the fact that they may have the impression that I think that as a result of what Gresham just said, this needs to probably be resolved, and it is resolved.

But, as a result of what is said, these are going to be banned.

As a result of our coming meetings that we're going to have here in Washington, we hope in the next, you know, whatever it is, next couple months or so, update will be separate soon.

They can be even better.

But you see, you've got to have a voice in there.

So don't, don't step up in a manner that immediately makes it impossible for us to have an outlaw.

That's all he has.

So we'd like to give you some good language, having in mind the fact that the language has got to leave a little loophole there.

Not a loophole, but a loophole.

Another thing, important thing, it seems to be is to get it off of the very narrow problem of the Jews, because, of course, whatever that is that applies to all Soviet citizens in there, undoubtedly, or other groups that you can find, you can think they're having difficulties like the Jews.

The problem that you may have there isn't, I expect, any less of the, I don't know,

Is that what I mean?

Oh, yeah.

Uh, and they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they,

He had a lot of Jewish friends there.

Bob, you will fall through.

Do you want to work on some Black issues?

Who's going to take the responsibility?

Why don't you work on the Black issues?

Anyway, the main thing is, just so we have the public and the Senate to say, let's be reasonable here, Collinson, that we've got some big stakes that we're fighting for, and that if we're in a coalition, you know, we want to go forward with this.

Thank you, Collin.

Let me assure you again, I want to tell you that I really want to compliment you on the relationship that you have with Terry.

I say that sincerely, and I say all of the great jobs as our chairman.

You really did.

He was outnumbered.

He had four Republicans and three Democrats.

When this number is such a small number by their own statements and these involve what they call security classification.

This makes it all the more difficult for us to try to interfere with matters that they think involve their security.

And I think that this might even be a good point that we can use in selling some of the Jewish communities at the point of the conflict, even though some of them say, well, they're classified as security risk on that.

It really doesn't involve security.

But we can't make that determination for them, as I see it.

I don't think we could.

I'm trying.

You're trying to get her.

No, I'm just having fun.

You're having fun.

I think this is going to be important.

We haven't mentioned either Warsaw or Hungary, but we have the very fine leads with the leadership there.

And I think George Bolton, the visit to Moscow, has sort of set the tone.

So, you know, George Bolton, we saw the Irish go down.

Well, he's there.

Yeah, he's right home.

And he is a strong, strong fellow.

I like him very much.

We're going to have him here.

He's coming in the fall.

Yes, he's pregnant, and I'm calling to pick up.

He's been looking 14 years, and he's only 43.

He's a sharp young man.

He is a sharp young man.

Well, I forgive these falls because of the allegation with the pair of, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

Well, fine.

We don't have a problem with that.

Good.

Good luck.

Thank you a lot.