Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume VII, Vietnam, September 1968–January 1969

106. Telephone Conversation Between President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Clifford¹

Washington, October 22, 1968, 5:24 p.m.

Clifford: Steps that the President can take in a dignified and honorable way to lower the level of combat and look toward a resolution of the conflict constitutes the course to follow. Now, it is my belief that the public will understand that the President does not control the timing—that you have been trying all along—

President: Now wait a minute right on that point. Maybe that ought to be one of the leads in the speech we are making. Maybe the little statement they have been working on ought to go a little deeper and maybe you ought to think about that and say: “Now, my fellow citizens, the President does not control these events. If I could have for 5 years I would have, or 5 months ago I would have, or 5 days ago I would have. I’m not the sole master of this fate here. There are a lot of other people involved.” Maybe we ought to say that. Now just put that down—“the President does not control.” I’m afraid we are not explaining these things well enough to the people and letting them see that he does not. Now go ahead. Pardon me for interrupting your thought, but I want to get what I can out of it as you go along.

Clifford: That’s all right. Interrupt me at any time. And I think in that regard you go back to a good starting point of September of 1967 and you tell the people what you said at that time. You have been making efforts for some time before that—all kinds, any opportunity came up that offered any possibility perhaps of bringing the war to a conclusion, you investigated it. You made a public statement in San Antonio in September of 1967.² You wanted to find the road to peace then. You said publicly that you would stop the bombing if they would just start talks that were productive—some such language as that.

Now, I think what you want to do also is tie-in, at some stage, that for the talks to be productive the GVN has to participate, and let that be a thread that runs throughout it. “The talks are going to be productive. Here’s the Government in South Vietnam now. Obviously, it has to play an important part in these matters.” Then I think you talk about the fact that Hanoi rebuffed your San Antonio offer, both publicly and privately, and then you touch on the fact that you continued your efforts to no avail. Then I think you get up to March 31st³ and you tried again, unilaterally cutting back the number of troops to be sent, turning the burden over to the South Vietnamese, and cutting the bombing back, and getting the talks started. And all along during this period—I think you might have some thread in there—that they would not sit down and talk on substantive matters. And we’d have to get Rusk’s consent, but I think if we can develop the theme in there that always they said, “No, we’ll never consider the Government of Vietnam,” or something like that, “We’ll never talk to them.” Of course, that constituted an absolute roadblock in getting any talks started. But you continued, nevertheless, always searching for peace. During these talks which have gone on week after week after week by every conceivable bid, they have remained adamant.

Then, I think we want to emphasize the point it was they who changed their approach. Now, I say again, you have to watch the language; get Rusk’s consent in there. But we can bring this down to the fact that it was they who finally informed us at one stage that they would agree to the GVN sitting down, and so then the negotiations, productive talks, substantive talks which could lead toward the end of the war, could begin, and the reason the matter came up at this time is because they decided to change their position.

Now the one wonderful thing about it is, it’s the truth, and it shows that here is the President who has worked on this in September 1967—it’s now more than a year ago—constant weekly efforts. Finally, they choose now. Why they chose now, I wouldn’t say that in a speech, but that’s it—we do not know. It isn’t up to them to tell us. Now, there’ll be any number of writers, I have already seen. I think the public would understand. They have chosen now because perhaps they feel they would like to take a try at this administration to see what kind of a deal they could get. And it-s been a year, and they are running out of time. You Don’t say it—people will understand it.

So, I have reached the conclusion, Mr. President, that the best serv-ice to this country is to do it the way you have done it. And then when they finally change no matter what time it is, whether it is 2 weeks before the election, or one week before the election or whenever it is, when they change and a deal can be made, a decent and honorable deal, I think it’s the President’s responsibility to make it, and I believe that the country will applaud him. My own private notion is that from a practical standpoint, the country has been well prepared now for the last 8 days for some kind of an announcement that would indicate that there is going to be a stop of the bombing and there are going to be substantive talks. I think the country is looking forward with the greatest eagerness to that. I think there will be overwhelming support from the media. I do not believe—I disagree with Dick Russell on a point. I believe that the whole climate that exists now will not be construed to be a political stratagem. We worked too hard on it too long, and it would be an obtuse man who would think with all of this going on that he might swing an election by selecting a time such as this. And, my God, they know—

President: I wonder if we shouldn’t say that it has nothing to do with it—Don’t want it to have anything to do with it and nobody should let anything interfere with it in some way.

Clifford: I missed the early part of that.

President: I wonder if we shouldn’t say in this statement that it has nothing to do with these events, and it shouldn’t have, and nobody else should take it into consideration. This is—everybody wants this.

Clifford: I think we would want to watch that wording with care, but I think something to say could be an affirmative.

President: All the candidates have assured me that they want peace as soon as they can get it.

Clifford: Yes, it seems to me it can be an affirmative statement and not defensive by saying this is something that we have worked toward. It is so transcendent in its importance that whenever the time came, no matter what its relationship might be to any other event this so transcends in importance, that we cannot be affected by other events taking place. We must grab the opportunity whenever it is presented to us. Something like that, which approaches it indirectly, but I think everybody would get it. But I think—I have felt for a long time—I have sung the same song—I have felt that during this last period of your administration, I had hoped and prayed, and I mean really prayed, that the time would come when there could be a cessation of the bombing even if it is unproductive because then your record will show that you have tried everything that there was to try.

President: Maybe we ought to say that. Maybe we ought to say I want this record to show that I have tried everything there was to try.

Clifford: “And that the circumstances are such that”—we have to be careful about that—“that circumstances are such that for the first time I am now free to stop the bombing because I know now that productive talks can take place”—something like that.

President: “And this will not cost additional American lives.”

Clifford: “This will not cost”—

President: “Will not result in the loss of additional American lives.” Well, now, then, you better not just do anything else besides get Russell Long taken care of and Juanita Roberts.⁴ You better just spend your time. I started to ask Buzz today if he’d be willing to revert to one-star—that’ll put yourself in her position. That would’ve been hard after 15 years in the service. Maybe you had better take your yellow pad and talk about and work on this for 5 or 10 minutes since you are going to have 500,000 words. See, there are just three people talking to me about this that have the overall broad picture—you and Walt and Dean and Buzz—four.

Clifford: Uh-huh.

President: So maybe you better do this tonight and tomorrow while they are messing around so that we can look at how we say this to the American people—more important, I think, how we say it to Eisenhower and how we say it to Nixon and how we say it to Wallace and how we say it to Dirksen and how we say it to Jerry Ford. They are going to be mean, I’ll just tell you, you can just see. I looked over these notes I made on Dick Russell, and he never would pin himself down. He finally said, “Well, I would give it a try.”⁵

Clifford: Mm-hmm.

President: But I know this is going to be rough sailing. I know they are going to charge it. I think that most of these papers with all of this big circulation—I notice there’s 22 million circulation endorsing Nixon and 4 million endorsing Humphrey. So the 22 million boys are going to be saying, “Oh, the old wheeler-dealer,” and we have got to make this as persuasive as we can and work on it hard if we do it. You get your lead pencil out and yellow paper in the other hand and work on it for me today and tomorrow, will you?

Clifford: Yes, sir. Incidentally, Buzz Wheeler and I go out tomorrow—let’s see just a minute—at 10:30 and give the briefings to General Eisenhower. You instructed me some months ago and I wrote him and got a lovely note. And then recently his man called and said that now he was feeling fine and wants very much to be brought up-to-date. We are going to take only a half hour and hit the high spots around the world.

President: That’s good. Now, what are we going to do on this proposal?

Clifford: On our proposal that we worked the language up today?

President: Yes. What are we going to say about it to him? I had given serious thought of going to see him before I agreed to it.

Clifford: Well, I wouldn’t mention that at all. I am not allowed to talk about that.

President: All right.

Clifford: And I am not going to get into it because if I talk to him and he says something—

President: Then he’ll talk to the others. What should I do about talking to him? That worries me.

Clifford: I believe that—

President: First, I believe we’ve got to get signed on and then decide what to do about the other because if we talk to people beforehand—

Clifford: If you get signed on, then the day that—the afternoon or the evening that you go on TV or something of that kind, you might take a helicopter out there and spend a few minutes with him and tell him to keep it under his hat and there it is. That would seem to me to be about the way to do it.

President: All right. Will you work on this thing for me? Just a simple—just what you said there. Also, would you follow through on this for me?

[Omitted here is discussion of a personnel matter, base relocation, and legislative issues.]

President: And I said in there, I said one time I told Secretary Rusk to draft a message that we could send to Harriman which could be signed by all the candidates saying that we were going to stand as one where there was an undivided voice in our relations abroad and they could expect no division from us. I said before we got it drafted, “Why, that didn’t seem wise to send it,” and I didn’t say that Humphrey had already blown it, but we didn’t think it wise to send it. But I said these speeches Don’t help us. The Bundy speech—I don’t know how much effect it had.⁶ I don’t know how much Humphrey’s had yesterday.⁷ I rather think that’s why they went back home. I think that is what held it up. I think they are going to see—

Clifford: I think the Bundy speech was more damaging.

President: They said all over the damn country that the Presidential adviser—and I guess you saw the intercept on it where it went back to where he is not even speaking for the country, not even speaking for his brother. Well, the way they go.

[Omitted here is discussion of issues involving Senator Long.]

1. Source: Johnson Library, Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of Telephone Conversation Between Johnson and Clifford, October 22, 1968, 5:24 p.m., Tape F6810.05, PNO 12. No classification marking. This transcript was prepared specifically for this volume in the Office of the Historian.
2. See footnote 6, Document 35.
3. Reference is to the President’s March 31 speech; see Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, vol. VI, Document 169.
4. The primary issue involving Senator Long was the location of military bases within his state. Juanita Roberts, an administrative assistant to the President and a colonel in the U.S. Army, had encountered difficulties regarding her reassignment upon the President’s retirement.
5. See Document 69.
6. See Document 63.
7. In a televised interview, Humphrey said that South Vietnam should not have “veto power” over the United States and urged cooperation on the part of Thieu. See The New York Times, October 21, 1968.