89. Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) and the Director of the United States Information Agency (Shakespeare)1
S: I just spoke with Bill Buckley and he feels very strongly about an idea he has. He has come to the conclusion that the Administration is losing and there are fishers (or fissures?) on the conservative side which have been with us.
K: Why?
S: They are deep and maybe you should talk to him. He feels this would be a domestic (?) time to say that people who fight in VN will be volunteers. I don’t know if the numbers will work.
K: No, we have looked into that.
S: He has a flood of mail and the numbers are bothering him about slippage. It would show understanding. He felt cooperate revulsion about Southeast Asia is greater than he thought. I have had a philosophic talk with him.
K: If society is so weak ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? /
S: Volunteers plus regulars are not enough?
K: No. We have looked at it carefully. It’s physically impossible. It’s not a policy choice. We just cannot do it. Not before next year.
S: He said in the future it won’t have a feeling of relating.
K: Not for the rest of the year.
S: I am startled. I don’t share his feeling but—
K: Moreover, I expect Buckley to fight that sort of thing. Our business elite is just maddening. They have no political sense.
S: All during the ’30’s they armed Japan.
K: If we let the students drive us out the business people will be their next victims.
S: That’s where they will turn?
K: We are gaining but the students want to destroy the society.
S: I just wanted you to know.
K: Bill is gallant and he supports the Administration, I know.
[Page 222]S: He says it’s unbearable that parents have wounded and dead sons in S.E.A. because they don’t have the feeling that sons are sacrificed for a2 cause.
K: I agree with that.
S: He has done a lot of thinking about it. He is in a more contemplative mood than I have ever seen him.
K: To lose your forum for the privilege of a slow withdrawal will be any better?
S: What will the President say?
K: Reaffirming what he has said and the success of the military. The success of withdrawal and so forth.
S: Bill’s antenna are so much better than my own. I don’t pick up the crossroads.
K: Our elite has collapsed. All over the country it’s disturbing.
S: His number in Conn. is 203/DA5–1231.
K: I will call him. I have word for you from the President. He wants the fellow that attended the Harriman meeting transferred to a lowly job. He thinks someone has to walk the plank.
S: For your private information I took a substantive step. We have one officer who signed the petition over there.3 That’s the one who showed poor judgment. He has been at State as special advisor for youth affairs for three years. He was scheduled to go to a university to do some extra study. He is being transferred to Bolivia or somewhere in L.A. and I brought him over and gave him a lecture as well. I felt that was substantive. It violated the ethic. But this young man Snyder4 is different. Haldeman called about that. It would be absurd to move him. He was invited by the Deputy Assistant Secy. of State. He is a member of the Open Forum.5 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? How do I discipline an officer for going to Dean Rusk’s home?
[Page 223]K: The President misunderstood.
S: The group who signed the letter are different.
K: I didn’t realize it was the Open Forum.
S: I talked to the officers and said I didn’t think they understood what career service was about. I thought this was disloyal. Of 250 there were 2 USIA officers. One is transferred. But this one young man who went to Rusk’s home, I find unacceptable. One young man shouldn’t be disciplined. The older ones should be but not this one. It should be at the top. This agency was one of the ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? At the base of that you have had no newspaper stories since I have been with it about the USIA policy toward the Administration. He hasn’t a problem with us. I don’t want him to misread—
K: He doesn’t. He thought you should set an example.
S: The Special Assistant to the Secy. of State and who has been assigned to a prestigious college has been pulled out of all that and sent to an obscure post.6 But to punish this kid would be wrong.
K: Let me raise that with him.
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Chronological File, Box 5, June 1–15, 1970. No classification marking.↩
- Omission is in the original.↩
- On May 8, more than 250 Department of State and other foreign affairs employees signed a letter, addressed to Rogers, which criticized U.S. involvement in Cambodia. For additional information, see Peter Grose, “250 in State Dept. Sign a War Protest,” New York Times, May 9, 1970, p. 1. Presumably, Shakespeare is referring to Cross, a USIA employee detailed to the Department of State to serve in Pedersen’s office as the Special Assistant for Youth and as the Executive Secretary of the Inter-agency Youth Committee.↩
- Not further identified.↩
- Rusk established the Open Forum in 1967 in order to facilitate the free exchange of ideas within the Department of State. On May 9, 1970, the Washington Post reported that 25 Department of State and AID personnel from the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the Open Forum had “called on Rogers to seek an ‘explanation’ about the present course of U.S. policy. Rogers met with them around a conference table for about an hour and 20 minutes.” (“State Department Aides Sign Letters Of Protest Over Escalation of War,” p. A2)↩
- Presumably, Shakespeare is again referring to Cross, who was later reassigned to Montevideo as an information officer.↩