21. Memorandum of Conversation1 2

PARTICIPANTS:

  • President Ford
  • Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State and Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
  • Lt. General Brent Scowcroft, Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

Kissinger: Perhaps we could get the 200-mile bill effective January 1, 1976. Then we could use the leverage in the negotiation.

The President: You felt the emotion in the room.

Kissinger: But they are wrong. On the deep seabed, if we don’t establish some order we will have in 15 years a struggle like the competition for territory during the colonial period.

The President: I better read into this.

Kissinger: We could establish a regime which would organize it, give us 95% of what we want, and give the LDC’s some residual. Without it, we could grab what we want but we would have a whole world against us. And that Case is nothing more than a Jewish agent. Why is he—the chief bleeding heart— against the Third World? Because of Israel.

[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to Law of the Sea.]

  1. Source: Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Memoranda of Conversations, Box 15, October 7, 1975–Ford, Kissinger. Secret; Nodis. The meeting took place in the Oval Office.
  2. Ford, Kissinger, and Scowcroft discussed the meeting earlier that day with Congressional Republican leaders concerning potential 200-mile fisheries legislation.