But at this point we’re dealing with a bunch of goddamn bandits, and we have got—and I think the way to do it is to put it right to them. They don’t want to play? Fine. And say [unclear] “if you don’t want to kick, boys, we’re leaving.”

Right.

And I [unclear]. And I think if you do that, you’ll find out pretty quickly they’re either going to take it or they’re not going to take it.

Absolutely.

So that’s what I would do—

I think, Mr. President, you’re absolutely right. I wrote it—

I don’t know that I’m right, but I mean—

[speaking over President Nixon] I’m sure you’re right.

I have a feeling that at this stage in the negotiations, Henry, not from our standpoint but from theirs, that these bandits, they need some shock treatment and [unclear]—

I looked it from the point of view of . . .

How it would look?

—of may—of having—perhaps you wanted to surface it. But—

That’s right.

—that’s not clear thinking, because if we surface it, you’ll make a speech. And you can make the proposal then any way you want.

Make it any way we want. When we surface it, you don’t have to put it—

At this point, the major thing is to get an impact on them.

I think that might impact in some way. He may be right but he may not be, either.[note 1] The identity of the man Nixon is referring to is not clear. He thinks that they might take this, huh?

No, I didn’t tell him what we were going to do. I asked him what he thought they would settle for.

And what’d he say?

And he said, well, they’ll start out—he said what we should do, rather than make another offer to them, is ask them, “What are you willing to settle for?” Well, there he’s wrong.

Uh-uh.

And he said, well, they will start by saying “prisoners for a deadline”. But a deadline for prisoners isn’t good enough. He’ll lose—everyone in Asia will think we’re just running. Therefore, we have to get something else. [President Nixon acknowledges.] And he said, “Therefore, we have to get a cease-fire.” He thinks we can get it through ’72. He said they’re not children and they will give us—and he said they’ll also—

A cease-fire?

Yeah, and even—he thinks they would stagger the—let us withdraw throughout ’72, that it doesn’t have to be early in ’72. I’m just giving you his views.

Yeah, I’m telling you the political—well, it remains to be seen.

But—

From the political standpoint, we . . . our major goal is not the cease-fire through ’72. That is—that’s damn—that’s important, because we don’t want South Vietnam to fall. Our major goal is to get our ground forces the hell out of there long before the elections.

Oh, yeah.

And be prepared to bomb the hell out of them in the event that they break it. We can still do that.

Right.

If they break the cease-fire against the South Vietnamese, we’ll bomb them. That’s enough. Listen, [Creighton] Abrams and those people with a little few goddamn—if they couldn’t do it with 500,000 people there or 400,000 or 350,000 the other time with Laos, what the Christ do you figure they’re going to do with 100,000?

Oh, no, 100,000—[President Nixon attempts to interject] the only problem is to prevent the collapse in ’72.

I know. I know! It won’t collapse in ’72, though, if we have a cease-fire and the American Air Force sitting in Thailand and a few other places, that’s a hell of a deterrent.

Yeah. But don’t you think—I have no political judgment. If there were an agreement this summer that said we’d be out with everything by September 1st next year, that this would kill the issue? No one would talk any more after there’s an agreement and a cease-fire that the war is stopping.

I’d put it—I tell you, September 1st has the ring of—smack dab of politics. You could do it on Aug—I’d say that August 1st is the latest you could do it, [Kissinger acknowledges] because you’ve got to get it so it doesn’t appear as if you’re doing it just as the election campaign begins, we’re getting out. Democratic [National] Convention’s in July. I mean, that’s—

That’s—

You have to get what you can get, but my point is that [unclear]—

I’ll start asking. If they agree to all the other propositions and say, “Now, give us the date,” I’ll say “January 1st, ’73”—

That’s right.

—because they’ll certainly not accept it. And we can go back to as far as July 1st, ’72 [unclear]—

And they’ll come out—they’ll go with January 1st, ’72.

Exactly, and then—

Then settle in between.

For July 1st.

Which would be about the date—I think that isn’t going to make that much difference.

That’s not [unclear].

Particularly [Kissinger attempts to interject] with our Air Force—with our Air Force, as I say, we’ve got to remember, we’re going to keep—we’re going to withdraw that Air Force—air power in Thailand and a few other damn places. Now, what [unclear]—

Yeah, but the Thais won’t let us bomb from there anymore after that.

Through the cease-fire?

No. Maybe through the cease-fire. I doubt it.

Well, that’s the point with that, isn’t it?

You see, the thing is, these North Vietnamese are mean enough so that if they dare, they might want you—might want to have one hell of a blow-up to ruin the . . .

All right then, what you could do would be to have a deal that everything but our air power would be gone.

That’s fine.

Maybe that’s the way to do it. In other words, get all ground forces out by July 1st and all air power out by January 1st.[note 2] The President is referring to 1 July 1972 for withdrawing American ground forces and 1 January 1973 for withdrawing American air power.

That’s easy.

I think that’s the better way to do it. And stagger it that way. But I think that—I just—my intuition tells me that if there is any chance—and I don’t know that there is; there may be. But if there’s any chance you’re going to get a—just a straight thing—and [unclear]—and then I’d forget what P—what they said about POWs: “Are you willing to discuss that?”

Oh, you are right.

What they said about that.

Absolutely.

All that is [unclear]—

We’ll fight that out in answer to the proposition.

Then that’s debating points. Let him—let [David] Bruce handle that, as to whether—what they meant when they talked about POWs and so forth and so on. What you’re gaining here is to get a, if you can, is to get them to consider a POW/cease-fire/withdrawal agreement. That’s all. Those three things. Infiltration, I think you—look, on infiltration, sure. Put it down, but you—but as far as international supervision and infiltration, they’re never going to agree to that, Henry. Never.

I’m not sure. They can agree to it. I don’t think it makes a . . . well, we have the problem—

It’s something—that you can give them.

Yes.

The main thing you can’t give on, you can’t give on the cease-fire. You can’t give on POW[s]. That—those are the two. [Kissinger acknowledges throughout.] That’s your rock bottom. Forget the rest. Anything else you can get, get. But remember that you can’t give on the others. It’s just you always know what your final deal is. That’s your final deal. You can’t give on a cease-fire and you can’t give on POW[s]. Every—that we can under—that we can stand on very easily.

Well, what we have to prevent next year, one way or the other, is—if there’s a cease-fire, we’re going to stop bombing throughout Indochina.

That’s right. [Unclear] we want to prevent—of course, we’d like to prevent the infiltration. My point is, how much effect is the international supervision going to have on them?

Well, just enough so that Cambodia and Laos don’t collapse on us during that period. That—

Well, I just don’t have much confidence in the supervision aspects.

I don’t either.

See, that’s my point.

It just slows it down a little bit.

So. So.

So we get through ’72. I’m being perfectly cynical about this, Mr. President.

Christ, yes, [unclear]—

If we can, in October ’72, go around the country saying, “We ended the war and the Democrats wanted to turn it over to the Communists”—

That’s right.

—then we’re in great shape.

Then let the Democrats have—and have the Communists have [unclear].

Frankly, I don’t [unclear]—

If necessary.

That’s fine with me.

[Unclear] big stakes.

In fact, if it’s got to go—

With the Chinese.

If it’s got to go to the Communists, it’d be better to have it happen in the first six months of the new term than have it go on and on and on.

Sure.

I’m being very cold-blooded about it.

I know exactly what we’re up to.

But—

Well, here we are, we’ve got—we’re going to have a whole hell of a—

But on the other hand, if Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam go down the drain in September ’72, then they’ll say you went into these, you say—you spoiled so many lives, just to wind up where you could’ve been in the first year.

Yeah.