Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XL, Germany and Berlin, 1969–1972

320. Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between the Ambassador to Germany (Rush) and the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)¹

August 25, 1971, 11:40 a.m., PDT.

K: How are you?

R: A little weary after all this moving around.

K: The demon negotiator.

R: But it’s quite a saga.

K: If we wrote our biographies they’d put it under fiction. Really, this has been the most brilliant negotiation I have ever seen. I was not surprised you brought it off substantively but I didn’t think it would go technically. The President is delighted and I just talked to Rogers.² He is down to such minor nitpicks that there’s no real problem left.

R: There really isn’t. It’s unbelievable.

K: They are down to paragraph 4 of part I, although they can’t explain what it means. It seems to me we can use it better for our purposes than they could for theirs.

R: That’s what I’ve told them.

K: What it says is in the area it can’t be changed unilaterally.

R: They are reaching under the bed to see if there’s a ghost somewhere. Since we each have our own legal theories, this will be interpreted differently by the Russians and us.

K: Is there a chance of your coming out? The President would like to see you.

R: I would like to.

K: We are all full of admiration for what you have done and the President would like to see you personally.

R: I would like to come.

K: How about tomorrow?

R: Fine.

K: Can you stay loose for a couple of hours and let me check with the President?

R: Yes.

K: I think it’s best for tomorrow. Then you and I can have a talk. I would like to go into the public consciousness of the President’s role in this. I agree with you that if he hadn’t had the guts to go unilateral in January, you’d still be arguing the points.

R: We’d still be arguing them when the second term is over.

K: I’ll have Haig get back in touch with you in a few hours.

R: I’ll be seeing Rogers at 3:00 again.³

K: Why don’t you call Haig when you are finished?

1. Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Kissinger Papers, Box 369, Telephone Conversations, Chronological File. No classification marking. Rush was in Washington; Kissinger was in San Clemente.
2. See Document 319.
3. See footnote 3, Document 318.