276. Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between President Nixon and his Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)1
K: Mr. President.
P: Henry, how did you get along at the Ford Theater last night?
K: It was very nice.
P: Julie said she saw you. She said most of the jokes were on our side.
K: They were very friendly. Of course, Bob Hope was making the jokes. Even the others—which weren’t against us—were sort of loving jokes. I thought your announcement . . .2
P: I was going to ask you about that. How did it go?
K: Mr. President, it could not have been better. I read in the newspapers and on TV . . .
P: It has confused the hell out of them, hasn’t it?
K: Murray Marder wrote a perceptive piece. He said—do you want me to get it?
P: Yes. We haven’t gotten the Post up here yet.
K: [read excerpts from the Marder column to the President]3
P: Good. And in the Times—which is far more important—had a chart which showed it going up and then going way down. Now the thing that is interesting to me is the two-month thing has another advantage. Making more announcements keeps reminding people that the other side got us in and we are getting out. Remember, Acheson wasn’t so dumb—he said keep telling them.
K: I think it worked beautifully.
P: Certainly from the standpoint, it worked beautifully. I think we have really put it to the North Vietnamese now. I think one thing we did get in was when I said, in the two-month period . . .
K: . . . was the rate of infiltration.
[Page 998]P: That puts it right to them. If the infiltration comes up, we will watch it. We will bomb them or change the rate of withdrawal.
K: Marder also points that out.
P: He does?
K: In addition to the impact on negotiations, it has an impact on your public image. Even on this, where we are set in our course, you have done the unexpected once again. You have never done the conventional in any announcement. You have done it in a complex way which enhances the image of you as a thoughtful man with long-range plans. That also helps among the sophisticates. It gives some confidence to the people. I spoke last evening to the Executive Vice President of NBC, Herb Schlosser, who is in charge of all programming and who actually had been on our side all along. He said Vietnam now, even among his rabid friends, is a moot point. They all think you know what you are doing.
P: Good.
K: And Mel Laird—I saw him last night. He said, “God damn it; he screwed me again.” But he said it was a good move.
P: He thought he would out-guess us, and didn’t make it. The best thing was to go to 45,000.
K: That’s right.
P: Now he can’t squeal about a thing.
K: We have intercepts that Hanoi is assessing its military situation pretty poorly. We have negotiations about as well set as we can.
[Omitted here is discussion of India and Pakistan.]
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential materials, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Box 12. No classification marking.↩
- At a press conference on November 12, the President announced that he was withdrawing 45,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam over the next 2 months and would make a subsequent withdrawal statement some time in February 1972. The text of the press conference is in Public Papers: Nixon, 1971, pp. 1101–1109.↩
- Brackets are in the original.↩