THE NIXON/GANNON INTERVIEWS

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Transcript: Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon Interview, May 12, 1983 [Day 4 of 9]

interviewer: Frank Gannon
interviewee: Richard Nixon
producer: Ailes Communications, INC.
date: May 12, 1983
minutes: approximately 202
extent: ca. 273kb
summary: This interview, comprising four video tapes, or about 3 hours, 22 minutes, is the fourth in a series of taped interviews with former president Nixon. The focus of the conversation is the Soviet Union and the West. Nixon discusses the Bay of Pigs, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and the S.A.L.T. Treaty.
repository: Walter J. Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries (Main Library)
collection: Richard Nixon Interviews
permissions: Contact Media Archives.

Day four, Tape one of four, LINE FEED #1, 5-12-83, ETI Reel #27
May 12, 1983

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:05
[Richard Nixon]

[Unintelligible.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:06
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:07
[Richard Nixon]

--speech in 1976, people said that he had--had done it several times and had watched it and then did it. That, of course, is the assholes that--who were producing it wanted to take credit.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:19
[Frank Gannon]

Wanted to get the credit for it.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:20
[Richard Nixon]

And they should--

[Frank Gannon]

[Unintelligible.] They had written and rehearsed it.

[Richard Nixon]

--never have put it out.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:22
[Frank Gannon]

Yeah.

[Richard Nixon]

Yeah. They rehearsed him.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:24
[Frank Gannon]

Yeah.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:25
[Richard Nixon]

Right?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:26
[Frank Gannon]

Yeah. That was [Panayi] and--

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:27
[Richard Nixon]

Wasn't that awful?

[Frank Gannon]

Yeah.

[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:30
[Richard Nixon]

I don't mind their doing it. I mean, I--e--everybody's got to do it his own way.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:52
[Action note: Picture appears.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:01:58
[Frank Gannon]

Today we're talking with President Nixon about the subject of the Soviet Union and the West. Mr. President, can we trust the Russians?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:02:10
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I recall talking to Manlio Brosio, the former secretary general of N.A.T.O., a great Italian diplomat who served six years in Moscow before he came to the United States. And he told me in the late sixties, before I became president, very, very vigorously, when many Europeans were clamoring for détente--he said, "I know the Russians. They are liars. They are great actors. They are cheaters. And they lie and they act because they consider it's their duty to do so." He says, "You cannot trust them." Now, having said that, however, he did not go on to say that you should not deal with them. And my answer to this whole proposal or question as to whether or not the Russians can be trusted is, very simply, only if we make agreements which are in their interest to keep, self-enforcing agreements, and only if everything we do with them positively is linked to something else which will cost them if they break the agreement. But you can't trust them on the basis that, well, we're sincere and they’re sincere. That is totally irrelevant where the Russians are concerned.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:03:18
[Frank Gannon]

Why do they lie and cheat? Why--why are they insincere?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:03:23
[Richard Nixon]

The reason is that their goal is very different from ours. To simplify it, our goal is peace as an end in itself, and their goal is victory, and whether it's peace or war, it's a means to the end, the end of victory--the Soviet or Russian or Communist domination of the world. And under Marxist-Leninist teachings, you use any means to achieve that great goal. And if it requires that you lie and you cheat, you lie and you cheat. Now, under the circumstances, we simply do not follow that particular type of quote, "morality," unquote, and under the circumstances, however, in dealing with them, it doesn't mean that we have to lie and cheat, but we must be aware of the fact that they will when they can get away with it. But, on the other hand, you can deal with them, and they will keep a deal if you make it on the basis that will serve their interests and ours.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:04:19
[Frank Gannon]

Are they sincere as people? As Andropov sits in the Kremlin, does he think of--does he look at a question and say, "Now, I've got to lie and cheat in order to achieve our Leninist--our good Leninist ends here," or do they sincerely believe that what they’re doing is right? Do they have a different definition of morality?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:04:37
[Richard Nixon]

I do not think that morality is really relevant as far as they're concerned. They are thinking in terms of the total Communist world, a Communist society for everybody, equality and everything else that Communism in its ideal state is supposed to produce. And they believe, therefore, that anything they do to achieve that is therefore justifiable. I recall, for example, a conversation with regard to the whole idea of whether or not they were sincere that I had with Ambassador Bohlen, our former ambassador to Russia and a great Russian expert, and he was concerned--this was in the early sixties, after he had become ambassador to Paris--by statements out of Washington in the early sixties that some Washington people in the government were convinced that Khrushchev was sincere in his desire for peace. And he said, "That is so stupid, and it is so wrong." He said, "He is a Communist. He can no more be sincere than this table"--there was a coffee table between us--"can be sincere. He is a materialist, and he will therefore be what--for whatever is necessary to achieve his ends. Sincerity has nothing to do with it."

Day 4, Tape 1
00:05:54
[Frank Gannon]

What do you think about the fairly widespread theory that one of the reasons for the Cold War is because we acted--in the p--post-Second World War period when we had the power of the atomic bomb uniquely ourselves--that we acted suspiciously and vindictively towards the Russians, and--or towards the Soviets, and that--that turned them into what they became--that, in effect, we created the Cold War by our paranoia and our anti-Communist f--Red Scare fears?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:06:24
[Richard Nixon]

Well, that is a theory that just doesn't stand up when you examine what happened. We have to remember that the [Baruch Plan], for example, offered the Soviet Union the opportunity to join with the United States in the developing of nuclear energy. They turned it down. We have to understand that the Marshall Plan, for example, was offered to the Communist countries as well as to the European countries, and the Soviet not only wouldn't take it themselves, but they wouldn't let some of their Eastern European satellites take it because they were not interested in that kind of agreement or cooperation with the West. President Eisenhower's famous "open skies" proposal, which he made, as you may recall, at the time of Geneva in 1955--that proposal, in which the--the two would join together in opening up their countries in terms of inspection so that we could not cheat each other and so forth--they turned that down. What we have to bear in mind is that when what was called the "containment policy" was developed, first under President Truman and continued under President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles, it made a great deal of sense. Then the United States has unquestioned superiority. and it was that superiority which avoided World War II, or World War III, I should say, it--because at the time, after World War II, when the policy of containment and the policy of massive retaliation was adopted, we have to remember that Europe was very weak. There was always the possibility that forces of revolution which were inspired and controlled and subsidized by the Russians would take over. It was necessary, in effect, to give them time--the European countries, the French and the British and the Germans, to develop--and the Italians as well--their own defense. We bought that time through the policy of containment. It made sense. I would just also comment on this whole idea that, as far as the Russians are concerned, that we caused them to become as aggressive and as adventurist as they are. They didn't need any help from us. That's the way they are. They say it. They said it even in the period of so-called "détente," when I was talking with Brezhnev. There's no mistaking about that at all. I think we have to have in mind that, as far as they're concerned, they have certain goals, and they're out to cheat them. No--they have certain goals, and they're out to achieve them. I can recall very well people asking me on occasion, "What is the situation with regard to the Russians? Is there a chance that we can get them to accept our views, our ideals, and so forth?" And then they go on to say, "Perhaps if we could only convince them that we are sincerely for peace, then they would not be as warlike as they are." Let me tell you--I know the Russians. We don't have to convince them that we're for peace. They know that. We have to convince them they cannot win a war. And once we do that, the basis is set for negotiation that will be responsible on both sides.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:09:45
[Frank Gannon]

Did they take advantage of--

[Offscreen voice]

Excuse me one second, gentlemen. I have to cut in. I'm sorry. Keep rolling.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:09:54
[Offscreen voice]

[Unintelligible.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:06
[Offscreen voice]

Okay, Steve--

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:25
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:26
[Action note: Picture reappears on screen.]

[Offscreen voice]

Frank, you want to lead in on that--

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:27
[Frank Gannon]

Yeah.

[Offscreen voice]

--aggressiveness of the Russians. [Unintelligible.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:31
[Offscreen voice]

--Frank, and then go to the president.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:33
[Action note: Screen goes black; picture reappears.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:34
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:39
[Action note: Picture appears.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:48
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:49
[Action note: Picture reappears.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:52
[Offscreen voice]

Stand by.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:10:56
[Frank Gannon]

How do you feel about the widespread argument that the Cold War was, at least in part, if not entirely, a product of American post-Second World War paranoia, Red Scare fear and suspicion, and at a time when we uniquely had atomic power, we forced them into a defensive Cold War posture?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:11:18
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I don't agree with that particular theory. It's somewhat similar, incidentally, to the theory that the holocaust in Cambodia was caused because the United States, which was trying to prevent a Communist takeover, brutalized the peaceful Cambodian peasants. Let me say that, as far as the Soviets were concerned, they didn’t have to be forced to or educated to be aggressive. That is what they believe in, and that is what they have been trying to achieve ever since World War II. Under the circumstances, I think what really happened here is that many people have overlooked, who have this particular theory, how the West really has bent over backwards in terms of reassuring the Soviet Union and trying to get their cooperation. The [Baruch Plan], which of course was presented during the---Truman's presidency, with regard to the sharing of atomic energy and so forth, Eisenhower's "open sky" proposals, the Marshall Plan itself, which the Russians and the Eastern European Communist countries turned down--they turned it down because the Russians insisted that they do. What really happened here is that the United States in effect held the ring with its superiority in nuclear power, behind which the European countries--the British, the French, the Germans and the Italians, the major ones as well as others--could restore their economies and their strength and thereby not be, in effect, vulnerable to Soviet subversion. I would just say that, finally, as far as all this theory to the effect that what we really have to do is to convince the Russians that we're for peace and that they will be for peace--is--that's just nonsense. I know the Russians. We don't have to convince them we're for peace. They know that. We have to convince them that they cannot win a war, we've got to convince them that they cannot win without war, and once we have done that, then we can build a peace that will last, but only then.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:13:23
[Frank Gannon]

Do they take advantage of their knowledge that we're for peace?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:13:27
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, whenever they possibly can. They, for example, took advantage of President Carter. Now, President Carter is no silly, sappy dove. He has a good service background in the Navy. He's a good, strong person in my view, but he felt that if he could only convince the Russians by unilaterally cutting back on our arms programs that we were for peace, as he put it in his famous Notre Dame speech, that they would do likewise--in other words, follow the golden rule with them. Well, he cut back on the B-1, and he cut back on the Minuteman III production line, and he--he delayed the [cruise missile] and the MX missile, and so forth. And what did the Russians do? As we cut back, they built up. That was the unilateral approach. It didn't work. Fortunately, at least as far as our defense program was concerned, Afghanistan opened his eyes, and he turned around. But let us clearly understand--we have tried that way, the way of trying to convince the Russians by our restraint that we are for peace, that we are for disarmament. And all they do is take advantage of it.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:14:37
[Frank Gannon]

How could a man who isn't a silly, sappy dove say that he had learned more about the Russians in the week after the--involving the invasion of Afghanistan than he had in all of his life to that point?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:14:49
[Richard Nixon]

That has nothing to do with some--whether somebody is silly or sappy. What it has to do is the way, unfortunately, that many educated Americans look at the world today. Let's face it--the Americans generally a--are a people who have good intentions. Oh, we make our mistakes and the rest, but we would like the rest of the world to share our values, and we believe that our values are so good that they are ones that should be shared and that others may agree to. But in the real world, it doesn't work that way, and sometimes it takes time to find that out.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:15:32
[Frank Gannon]

Yalta is one of the most controversial events of the modern history. What do you think happened at Yalta? How would you describe the Yalta Conference?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:15:44
[Richard Nixon]

Well, those who were there--and here again, I--I would go back to Ambassador Bohlen, who knew something about Soviet-American relations then and later--those were there believe that what went wrong at Yalta was not what was agreed to, but the fact that the Russians did not carry out the agreement--agreement with regard to, for example, elections in Poland and that sort of thing. Once it was agreed to, they didn't even follow it out whatever. Now, whatever the case may be, what we have to understand is that making an agreement which was not self-enforcing was the mistake--trusting the Russians, if I may --may use that term. That if they--we signed an agreement with them, that they would follow it in spirit and letter just as we would--that was the mistake at Yalta. That mistake having been made, it must not make again--we must not make it again.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:16:42
[Frank Gannon]

You don’t think, then, that Franklin Roosevelt was operating either under diminished physical capacity or that he was suffering from pro-Communist or, indeed, Communist, advisors?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:16:54
[Richard Nixon]

Well, there isn't any question about his own anti-Communist ideas, there's--as far as Franklin Roosevelt is concerned. There, however, is some question with regard to advisors, advisors who were not pro-Communist, but advisors, I would put it, who were naïve about the Communists. Maybe there were some who were pro-Communist, but I think the latter, what--what Lenin has referred to as the--the "useful idiots," those who don't know better and should know better. That was the real problem.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:17:29
[Frank Gannon]

Do you discount Alger Hiss's role at a--as a Roosevelt advisor at Yalta, then?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:17:33
[Richard Nixon]

I do not know what his role was, but the fact he was there is not reassuring, because there's no question but that he was a Communist at that time, and certainly that could have had some effect. I would say further that with regard to Roosevelt at Yalta, I talked to Winston Churchill about it, and he tried to be diplomatic about it. But he said there was no question, and he has written this as well, but he said it very emphatically to me--that President Roosevelt was not at his best at Yalta. And what happened was that Roosevelt, in effect, joined with Stalin and supported Stalin's views against Churchill, and Churchill fought a valiant but losing battle in attempting to deal with the Russians on a realistic, tough-minded basis, and that was the tragedy.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:18:23
[Frank Gannon]

President--

[Richard Nixon]

But I--let us--let us make it clear--I am not going to judge those who were advising Roosevelt on the basis of whether they were pro- or anti-Communist. That has nothing to do with it. What--it has something to do with it, but the real problem is something very different, and that is--and much more serious, looking at today's problems--and that is they were naïve about the Russians and what they might do. And that is going to be our greatest danger in the future.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:18:56
[Frank Gannon]

President Carter talked about the golden rule in dealing with the Russians. Didn't you have a Nixon version of the golden rule for dealing with the Russians?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:19:05
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, yes. I had a very interesting conversation in the first state dinner that we had for Golda Meir. She was very concerned a-- about what she thought was the soft-headed views of some Europeans who were "slobbering over it," as she put it--the idea of détente. And she just wanted to be sure that we weren't taken in by the Russians, because she grew up in Russia, and she remembered that the Russian drunken policemen [or "policeman"] used to come by every Saturday night and beat her father up because he happened to be a Jew. And so she had strong emotional feelings against them, but also she didn't trust them generally. And then, in order to reassure her a bit, I said, "Well, let me give you a definition of détente that is a little different." I said, "There is the golden rule of the Bible, 'Do unto others as they do unto you.'" I said, "That isn't the way you deal with the Russians. The international golden rule--and particularly one which must apply whenever you're dealing with an adversary like the Russians--is, 'Do unto others as they do unto you.'" She started to nod, and Henry Kissinger said, "Plus ten percent."

Day 4, Tape 1
00:20:18
[Frank Gannon]

With the invasion of Afghanistan and the suppression of Solidarity in Poland and other activities throughout the world, hasn't détente been discredited in the last several years--certainly since you've left the White House?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:20:31
[Richard Nixon]

Discredited in the sense of how it was managed, but when you look at it historically, not in the sense of how it worked when it was properly managed. And what I am suggesting here is that the period of what is called "détente" really began in 1969. That was when I, in my inaugural, said that we were going to enter a period of negotiation rather than confrontation with the Russians, and we began then negotiations at the ambassadorial level, at the foreign minister level with Dobrynin, the ambassador here, and with Gromyko, the Foreign Minister, with Kissinger on our side, and I participating on occasion, and also by letters, an exchange of letters with Brezhnev. Now, in that period of time, détente produced the Berlin Agreement, which was very much in our interest, and, we believe, in theirs as well, but particularly in ours because we got away from those over-and-over-again incidents of crises on the Berlin Autobahn. It also had a very significant effect in deterring Russian adventurism. They tried to put submarines into Cienfuegos in 1970 in Cuba. We objected, and we said, "If you don't knock that off, then we're not going to continue to negotiate on arms control and trade," and other things that they wanted. They knocked it off. They, uh--w--it was effective, certainly, in restraining them in Jordan in 1970, when the Syrians and the Jordanians were having a go at it, and we were supporting the Jordanians since the Syrians were the invaders, and the Russians were supporting the invaders. They stepped out of that, or kept out of it, I think, because--I'm sure--because of their desire to have a summit meeting, which was to occur almost two years later. The same is true of Indo-Pakistan. When--the--there is no question in my mind but the fact that we had our summit meeting scheduled by that time, that they restrained the Indians, or at least did not egg them on at a time that India would have gobbled up West Pakistan if the s--Russians had stood by and allowed them to do so. But we made it very cl--clear that, unless they were--would cooperate with us in bringing about a ceasefire--that there would be no summit, and that had a--its necessary effect. What I am suggesting is this: détente will only work if it's combined with deterrence, and by "deterrence"--that means you must have the military strength to make it clear that whoever engages in aggression will find that the costs are far greater than anything he's going to gain. And détente will only work provided, too, I--you have everything linked. Arms control must be linked with conduct. That's the way we practiced it, and it worked. Now, when it is practiced in a way that it's two for them and one for us, like, for example, we will cut back on our military expenditures, we'll cut back on our programs, without any reciprocal action on their part, then, of course, it is a disaster. But properly managed, détente with deterrence is the only acceptable option for the West and for the world today.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:24:01
[Frank Gannon]

If they--isn't--isn't that ultimately ill-fated, though? Because if they sit back and are prudent and disciplined and just wait and depend on the cyclical nature of American politics, so that a conservative, strong, hard-headed détente president will be followed inevitably, sooner or later, by a softer, more accommodating president--if they just sit back and wait, they'll eventually get what they want. Indeed, now, it's arguable that they have a strong conservative president who can't even get his strong defense / hard-headed détente program through Congress.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:24:35
[Richard Nixon]

Well, it's easy to make that kind of judgment or appraisal, and to say, "Well, détente won't work." And my question is--what's the option? The option is--to détente--the alternative is simply unacceptable. The Russians are there. It is true, as many have said, that they will lie, they will cheat, they're out to do us in--but they are there. They are a superpower, and it is irresponsible, with our--our being in a position of superpower as well, that we not do everything that we possibly can to avert a confrontation that would escalate into nuclear war that would destroy each other and most of the rest of the world. And until you find some option to détente, détente, hard-headed détente, as I have suggested, then it seems to me that that is the path to pursue. It is not easy, and I'm not going to suggest that there--there are times when they may not gain more than we do, but I believe that what has to develop here is a bipartisan, within the parties and between the parties, approach to this so that we will have continuity, so that we don't have hard-headed de--détente followed by a soft-headed, woolly-headed détente. That is the worst of both worlds.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:25:59
[Frank Gannon]

Do you think that the Soviets are developing biological and chemical weapons now?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:26:04
[Richard Nixon]

Well, the evidence is mixed, but I think we have to assume that they are.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:26:08
[Frank Gannon]

What should we do, then?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:26:09
[Richard Nixon]

And that is something that has to be taken up at the very highest level. When a summit meeting does occur, as I am convinced it should, and will, then that has to be very high on the agenda, and it's got to be made very clear that that will not be tolerated, but you don't go in there and say, "Please won't you quit using biolog--biological and chemical warfare--weapons?" Rather than approaching it that way, you say, "If you're going to use them, we're going to," and we have to have a program ready to go, and then we should initiate it.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:26:41
[Frank Gannon]

Can we--since it's very hard to prove or to verify whether or not they're being manufactured, and since, as you would have us operate from the premise that they do lie and they cheat in order to further their goals, could we depend on any assurances they gave at a summit that they weren't doing it? Don't we have to have a program of our own now as--in--in terms of preventive medicine?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:27:05
[Richard Nixon]

Well, we should develop a program if we don't get some assurances. But I think that, on the other hand, we have enough in place that a program could get going very, very fast. And I think what we have to bear in mind is that this is an area which could and should very properly be a subject for negotiation. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to have verification in many of these areas. But, again, it seems to me that the only alternative to not proceeding in this way is simply a runaway race in biological and chemical and environmental warfare, and that could be, believe it or not, even more devastating than nuclear war.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:27:50
[Frank Gannon]

Do you think the Soviets cheat on S.A.L.T.?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:27:53
[Richard Nixon]

There again, the evidence is mixed, and I know that many people believe that they have in the military, and some claim that they have not. But that misses the point. It isn't a question of whether they cheat. What they have done in S.A.L.T., without any question, is doing everything they could allowed by the agreements. And what the United States unfortunately has done is not doing what we could under the agreements--for example, canceling the B-1 bomber. It was permitted under S.A.L.T. Stopping the Minuteman III production line--that was permitted under S.A.L.T. Not going forward with the MX missile or the cruise missile as fast as we could--both of which were permitted under S.A.L.T. If those actions had not been taken, the United States would not be in a position of inf--inferiority, particularly in land-based missiles, which, first, destroyed Senate--Senate support for approval of S.A.L.T. II, and, second, makes it necessary for us to catch up at the present time. So, as far as the Soviet cheating in this area and that area, we have to be concerned about that, but what we also have to be concerned about is our own failure, when we knew that they were moving forward, to go forward with our own programs.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:29:17
[Frank Gannon]

What's your assessment of Andropov?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:29:21
[Richard Nixon]

Well, he is a very intelligent man. He--very--certainly tough, strong, ruthless. Let us understand right at the beginning that one of tho--one of--s--s--I heard someone--someone talking back there. What we have to understand right at the beginning is that all of this really sappy kind of writing that was done after he came into power is a terrible reflection on our media, on some of our so-called "Soviet experts," and on ourselves. The fact that [makes popping sound] great deal was made out of--out of the knowledge, apparently, that he spoke English, that he was well-mannered, that he was quite civilized, that he liked Western music, that he might even like Scotch whisky and the rest--as if that had anything to do with the kind of leader he was going to be. It had as little to do with the kind of leader that he was going to be as the kind of observations that were made about Khrushchev when he came into power. I remember very well some of the news magazines were pointing out that he spoke poor Russian, that he wore ill-fitting clothes, that he drank too much, and, therefore, that he was going to be a very ineffective and poor leader, not in the league with Stalin. What we have to understand is that the clothes they wear and their personal habits and whether they are elegant or not has nothing to do with whether or not they are going to be formidable leaders. I--it's--it's sort of the same attitude Americans have toward the--the Communists generally--so many Americans. They have the feeling that they're all supposed--the--the--supposed to be like Bolsheviks with--bearded and dirty working-class types. That isn't the type that they are--not here and not abroad. That is why it was so hard for many to--Americans to understand an Alger Hiss or, for that matter, a Philby, or any of the other--those who came from the intellectual classes, with fine manners and the rest. We come back to Andropov--intelligent, tough, ruthless, more formidable because he is younger, and also because, I think, of a better sense of public relations than Brezhnev. On the other hand, a pragmatist, a--a pragmatist who was head of the K.G.B. knows better, perhaps, than any other Russian leader--leader--better than Stalin, better than Khrushchev, better than Brezhnev--the weaknesses that the Soviet Union has. And he, knowing those weaknesses, the economic weaknesses, the ideological weaknesses, the fact that the system isn't working--I think that that means that, as a pragmatist, he will recognize the necessity to have some kind of accommodation with the West--not a surrender, but an accommodation.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:32:16
[Frank Gannon]

There are rumors, although he is younger than most of the other Soviet leaders, that he is not in good health. Do you have any opinions or information about that?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:32:25
[Richard Nixon]

No. There are rumors, and I would assume that that was the case, because he has missed some meetings. On the other hand, let's not allow that to mislead us as to how effective he can be. That may only mean that he's going to be in a hurry to accomplish the goals that he has to accomplish, and if he is in a hurry, then let's give him the opportunity to turn in a different direction than that of simply building on the past, building their strength and--and not doing anything to reduce the dangers of nuclear conflict that's going to destroy his country as well as others.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:33:04
[Frank Gannon]

Now that Soviet summit meetings between presidents of the United States and leaders of the Soviet Union have become almost commonplace, people have become fairly blasé about them, but when you first went there in 1959 to meet Khrushchev, when you were vice president, that was a very dramatic event that riveted the world's attention. Through a very unique stroke of luck, we have some film that I don’t think has ever been seen before--I don't think you've seen it before--that was taken by one of your Secret Service men who was with you on the trip. One of the films he took, which we have, was seated in the front seat of your limousine as you drove into the Kremlin for the first time. So, through his film, we can see today what you saw that first time going into the--the citadel--of the--into the enemy's--into the heart of the enemy's citadel. As we see that, do you recall any of your thoughts?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:34:00
[Richard Nixon]

Are they going to put it on?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:34:01
[Frank Gannon]

Mm-hmm.

[Richard Nixon]

Oh.

[Action note: They watch clip; it appears to be silent.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:34:32
[Frank Gannon]

You can even see the flags flying on the car.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:34:34
[Richard Nixon]

Mm-hmm.

[Action note: Clip continues.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:34:41
[Richard Nixon]

Well, this was my first visit to Moscow. And I've made five since then. I remember that I was extremely well-prepared, because this was the first visit to Moscow of anybody of my rank. President Roosevelt went to Russia, but that was in Yalta in the Crimea, not to the Russian capital. I had heard about Khrushchev. I knew that he was a very, very capable, tough, unpredictable leader who would test my mettle and who would be taking advantage of any lack of knowledge that I might have. And so, f--consequently, I was looking forward to seeing him, to see what made him tick.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:35:30
[Frank Gannon]

What were--what were your goals? What did you want to accomplish by the trip?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:35:36
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I was there, actually, to open an American exhibition, which was the first one that was being held in the Soviet Union, and one that had had a very, very great impact. The tickets were being scalped--that is done there as well as it is here--and the Russian people were very, very impressed by the exhibits they saw, so impressed that T.A.S.S. had several articles before we got there indicating that this exhibit was really not indicative of what life was really like in the United States, but only of how the millionaires lived and that sort of thing. So I knew that I had to lay a little of that to rest, so I was prepared to make a speech, and I just assumed that, as far as Khrushchev was concerned--that I--I would listen to his views. I was not president. I could not negotiate with him, but I would listen to his views, and, to the extent possible, reassure him as to our own motives, where he may have had a--misinterpreted them or misunderstood them. Well, as it turned out, it wasn't quite as peaceful as it was predicted it might be. I must say, however, that I had done a great deal of homework, and I was prepared to talk on any number of issues that he might r--raise. And I found, finally, that he rose--he--he raised every issue there was.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:36:57
[Frank Gannon]

Again thanks to your Secret Service man, we have some film of your first meeting with Khrushchev in the Kremlin.

[Action note: They watch clip.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:37:18
[Frank Gannon]

How well had your briefings prepared you for what he turned out to be like?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:37:25
[Richard Nixon]

Quite well. I think they may have underestimated his quickness, his unpredictability. They did indicate that he was going to be very tough and that he'd take advantage wherever he possibly could, that he could put on quite an act if necessary. But I think that they underestimated his intelligence--underestimated, probably, again, for a reason it's always hard for me to understand--he didn't happen to have a college education, he grew up as a pig tender, he didn’t speak very good Russian, and consequently we think, well, such a man therefore can't be all that capable. That has nothing to do with capability. I th--I remember very well Foster Dulles commenting on that, when news magazine articles came out to the effect that Khrushchev was one who spoke poor Russian and drank too much, and wasn't going to last long--not in Stalin's league, and he says, "Look. Don't believe this. Anybody that gets to the top in that Soviet hierarchy, fighting and murdering and conniving his way to the top, is a very strong person and one who is formidable, and you have to learn to deal with him on that basis." And he was dead right. That's true of Khrushchev. It's true of Kosygin. It's true of Brezhnev, and I know it's true of Andropov. The weak do not get to the top in Communist countries.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:38:54
[Frank Gannon]

Khrushchev seemed amiable enough in these films of your first meeting.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:39:00
[Richard Nixon]

He was very amiable whenever people were around. He was a great actor, as are most of the Russians, and whenever people were around, when the cameras were on, he was gracious. He wanted to prove that he was a good host.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:39:17
[Frank Gannon]

What was the first meeting like?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:39:20
[Richard Nixon]

Well, it changed from night into day, or day into night, I should say. All the sunshine smile and the rest--we sat down opposite each other at a table there in his relatively modest Kremlin office--the same office, incidentally, that I was later to sit down with--many years later--with Brezhnev, on two occasions, in 1972 and 1974. And he began to berate me, to my great surprise, about a resolution that had been passed in the Congress just before I left, a resolution called the Captive Nation Resolutions. It wasn't anything new. It's been passed every year since World War II, and it simply indicated the support of the American Congress and the American people, the moral support, of those peoples living in Eastern Europe and referred to it as "the captive nations."

Day 4, Tape 1
00:40:10
[Frank Gannon]

Wasn't that an undiplomatic thing to do, though, just before this trip?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:40:13
[Richard Nixon]

Had nothing to do with diplomacy. The Congress always passed it, and always at that time of year. It had nothing to do with my trip, but Khrushchev thought that it was deliberate. He said, "Why would you have done this? Why would you have had your Congress do this before this trip? It's created the wrong atmosphere." And I tried to point out, "Look. We didn't do it. The Congress did it," which was absolutely true. We didn't have control over it, and, incidentally, let me point out this was not a resolution that required the signature of the president. This was a resolution that was passed by the Congress. It was a state of the Congress--they pass them all the time down there, and usually nobody pays much attention to them. It's simply for the folks back home. But no matter how much I tried to explain it to him, and--pointing out that we did have many people in our country of Polish background, and Rumanian [ordinarily "Romanian"] background, and Hungarian background, and so forth and so on, who were concerned about those living under Communist governments in Eastern Europe--that--that under the circumstances, while they felt strongly about it, we would not, of course, have a--have a--had a resolution passed for the purpose of embarrassing him or raising a provocative issue before I arrived there on a so-called goodwill trip. But it didn't get across to him, and, finally, after I had explained, however, how the resolutions were passed, and after--he just held up his hands. "I can't believe that, that that's happened in that way," he said. "Well, after hearing all this conversation, I can only say that, as far as the resolution substance is concerned, it simply has no basis in fact whatever." Let me think a minute. I've got it. I'm trying to shorten this down. He said, "After hearing all this conversation about the con--about the resolution, about the captive peoples, and about how it was done, I have only one reaction." And I said, "What it is--what is it?" He said, "This resolution stinks. It stinks like horse shit, and there's nothing that stinks worse than pure horse shit." Well, the translation was made, and--by [Trianosky], the translator--he blushed as he did it, because at first he wasn't going to do it, but our ambassador, Tommy Thompson, was sitting there, and he smiled when he heard it in Russian, and [Trianosky] had to translate it exactly as he said it. And so I remembered that, when he mentioned horse shit, when I had grown up in California, grew up in an agricultural area--that a neighbor one time had a load of pig manure brought in, and it--the stench was overpowering, much worse than horse manure. And so I said, "Well, I'm very interested to hear what you say, but I have to disagree on one point," and his ears perked up a bit. He [sic] said, "There's one thing that smells worse than horse shit, and that's pig shit." He said, "Well, you may be right on that, but you're not right on anything else."

Day 4, Tape 1
00:43:22
[Frank Gannon]

The--your relationship only went--only went downhill from that high point, I guess.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:43:30
[Richard Nixon]

Well, it went down for a while. We went ther--then from the Kremlin after this meeting, which was just hammer and tongs--that was only the prelude of what was to come later. And although the rhetoric wasn't quite as, shall we say, "earthy," later, as it was on this occasion, it was really tougher, because we began to talk about things that were a lot tougher than manure. We went over to the American exhibition, and it was there that the first time that he had ever appeared on American television and worldwide television with a leading American figure took place.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:44:08
[Frank Gannon]

We have some film. This was--this opening of the American exhibition, or your confrontation with him, became one of the most famous events of modern political history, the--the famous Kitchen Debate. We have some film of you and Khrushchev in that Kitchen Debate.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:44:29
[Action note: They watch clip.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:45:27
[Frank Gannon]

At what point did you figure out that you had a tiger that you had better get by the tail?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:45:32
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I could see that he felt that he was really playing to his audience, and he di--was not thinking, however, that he was playing to an American audience then, because this film that you just saw, or that we just showed, was there as an exhibit. It was in color film, as a matter of fact, and one of the things we talked about prior to this particular interchange that you've just seen was with regard to the fact that in color television that we had made advances which they had n--of course had not yet reached in the Soviet Union. And that was what led him to make the s--statement to the effect that--"Look. We've existed only forty-two years, and you've existed a hundred and eighty years, and this is the level of where you are now," as he looked around at the exhibit--you saw his gestures there--he said, "but in seven years we're going to catch you, and we're going to pass you, and then wave goodbye." You could see what a great actor he was. He's always playing to the audience, but he was playing to his Russian audience. But I knew that there were Americans watching that, too--the American press. I had no idea this was going to be shown later in the United States. And so I thought it was time that--we had to right the balance just a bit, but I still had to be the host. He was at a higher level than I. I was still vice president, and he was, of course, at the general secretary level. So how could I be a good host and yet take him on in an effective way? And that's why when--as we walked on, I tried to think of how I could set the record straight with regard to his charges to the effect that the United States was ahead now, but that they were going to catch up, and they were going to pass us, and that we would follow and do likewise.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:47:29
[Frank Gannon]

How a--

Day 4, Tape 1
00:47:30
[Richard Nixon]

S--

[Frank Gannon]

Sorry. Mm-hmm?

[Richard Nixon]

So, the next time, as we went along, it got a little worse, however. I thought he had probably given his best shot here, but we next went by a model American grocery store. It was nothing compared to the supermarkets we have here, but it was a pretty good store and have--have--had been one of the most successful exhibits in the whole American exhibition. The Soviet people looked at all these marvelous products, the diversity--not everything the same as it is there, the diversity of freedom is what--is its hallmark. And as we went by the grocery store, I just casually mentioned to him that I had grown up in a family where my father had a small grocery store and that my brothers and I had worked in it, as we worked before and after school in order to help work our way through school. And after the translation weez [sic] --it was made, he said, "All shopkeepers are thieves." I said, "Well," I said, "that's apparently true in the Soviet state as well." I said, "I was down at the market here"--I had gone there very early in the morning just to see what it was like. And I said, "I noticed that--as--here were the bureaucrats who run--who worked for the state were--had a pair of scales, a set of scales, on which products were weighed, and then the customers--there was another s--set of scales, and they would weigh the--they--the products on their set of scales as well. So maybe the state can't be trusted either." Well, that at least got one little jab back in.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:49:02
[Frank Gannon]

How acrimonious was the Kitchen Debate, in fact?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:49:06
[Richard Nixon]

Well, the part that we saw earlier was not acrimonious, and that was widely presented in the United States as being the Kitchen Debate. It was really very low-key on my part, because it did not involve, incidentally, the strength of America--military. Military, as you'll note--this was a--this was a discussion of economic progress. And then we got to the kitchen--that was something else again. This was a house--it was a whole house, not just a kitchen, but we happened to be in the kitchen area, and we began to discuss washing machines, and when we discussed washing machines, I happened to make the point, casually again, that in--under our system--that there were many different kinds of washing machines and that people could have a choice. He says, "That's not a good idea. In the Soviet Union we make only one kind. Everybody has the same kind. That's much more efficient." Then I just casually mentioned, "Well, it's really very much better to be talking about washing machines than it is about the--the relative strength of our missiles," because I knew that he had been making some very provocative comments about Soviet progress in missiles and how they had--were ahead of the United States. And then he practically blew up, and he said, "But your generals are trying to threaten us. They're threatening us by their talk about their power," and so forth. And then we went at it hammer and talks--hammer and tongs--with regard to the relative strength of the United States and the Soviet Union. But the key point that I made, and what was the real Kitchen Debate, was that it missed the point as to which was the stronger of the two. I said the important thing for us to bear in mind is that both of us are strong, because I wanted at least to give him a position, which I knew he'd desperately need, where I weres [sic] recognizing, and the United States was recognizing, his equality. I said, "We are both strong. What we have to do is to diplomatically work out methods whereby that strength will not u--be used in a destructive way."

Day 4, Tape 1
00:51:16
[Frank Gannon]

After this, he wanted to take you out to see his country house, his dacha. We have some film of that country house.

[Action note: They watch clip.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:51:32
[Frank Gannon]

Do you want…to describe…your--

Day 4, Tape 1
00:51:38
[Richard Nixon]

Well--

[Frank Gannon]

--first impressions?

[Richard Nixon]

That film, incidentally, brings back many memories. It does not really capture the beauty of the house, its location, and its size. It's actually bigger than the White House. I--it was a magnificent former residence of either a czarist noble or perhaps one of the czars themselves had lived there. But the new czars--they lived as--as well as the old. As a matter of fact, I--I think there was a--a story, probably apocryphal, to the effect that Brezhnev was showing one of these beautiful dachas to his mother, and she was remarking about how nice it was, and she says, "But what if the Communists come back?" But, in any event, the situation with regard to this particular dacha--was concerned was that we got there after the--we'd had this acrimonious confrontation at the so-called Kitchen Debate, when Khrushchev recognized that he perhaps had been a little too belligerent, and he tried to compensate for it. And so, after we'd had a--a luncheon, in which we threw our glasses into the fireplace and shattered them after sh--after drinking champagne, he--he was simply as hospitable as he possibly could be. He said, "You really have got to go to the dacha." We had been scheduled to meet for lunch there the following day. He said, "You've got to s--go there and spend the night. It's much cooler, much more pleasant than in Moscow." So he insists that we go, and that's why we arrived in the evening, and then he arrived the next day.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:53:33
[Frank Gannon]

But when he arrived, he took you on a boat ride, and, again thanks to the--your Secret Service man's film, we can see some of that boat ride, which looks more like a--in some aspects looks more like a campaign trip than a pleasure trip.

[Action note: They watch clip.]

Day 4, Tape 1
00:54:08
[Frank Gannon]

This must have been all planned. Didn't they tell you that it was--that these things were spontaneous?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:54:17
[Richard Nixon]

Well, as I look at that film, I recall vividly what happened. I knew that it had been planned. I--nob--I could tell pretty well it wasn't spontaneous, and I knew that, as far as millions of average Russians are concerned, they didn't have the opportunity to be out there swimming in that river. And later Tommy Thompson, our ambassador, said, "Well, those are all party types." Those were the elite of the party that were allowed to swim there in that area and so forth. But I must say that Khrushchev made the best of it. You can see him waving his hand. He's doing that for purposes of our photographers, the American photographers, to show that he was a man of the people, and he used to look down at these people, and he would nudge me, and he said, "Look. Do they look like captives?"--referring to the Captive Nations Resolutions. "You see, the captives"--"the slaves," he called them--"they're very, very happy." And I said, "Well, you always make political propaganda." He says, "Oh, no. I don't make political propaganda. I just tell the truth."

Day 4, Tape 1
00:55:22
[Frank Gannon]

Do you think it was planned right down to the baby that was handed you?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:55:25
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, I think--

Day 4, Tape 1
00:55:26
[Frank Gannon]

Are they that--are they that calculating and detailed?

Day 4, Tape 1
00:55:29
[Richard Nixon]

No, I do not think that, as far as the handing of the baby to me--that that was done. I think that was just something spontaneous that happened, a--and that does show that, when we talk about the Russians lying and cheating and so forth and so on, we've got to be a little more precise. What we understand and what we must understand, very simply, is this: the United States and the Soviet Union can never be friends. However, that does not mean that Russians and Americans cannot be friends. Russians are basically a strong--as they proved in World War II--courageous people. They're very emotional. They can be very hospitable, and most of them, I found, when I got out of Moscow on my various trips there, into--into Asian Russia and [Nova Sibersk] in Siberia and Sverdlovsk in the Urals and Alma-Ata way down in--near the Chinese border--and Samarkand near the Persian border, and Kiev in Minks [he may mean "Minsk"] --you would find an outpouring of real warmth from people. What we have to understand is that, as far as the leaders are concerned, they can be Communist one moment and Russian the next, and sometimes it's an act, but sometimes it isn't. So, with all these things in mind, that doesn't--that means that it is very possible for them to be very human when they're acting as Russians. On the other hand, when they're acting as Communists, you must be sure that--you c--may be sure that they can be very ruthless.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:57:10
[Frank Gannon]

I think we're at the end of our first hour.

Day 4, Tape 1
00:57:13
[Offscreen voice]

[Unintelligible.] We have to stop and change the tapes. We'll take five minutes. Gentlemen, you want to--

00:57:16
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

00:57:17
[Action note: Sound cuts off.]

Day four, Tape two of four, LINE FEED #2, 5-12-83, ETI Reel #28
May 12, 1983

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:01
[Frank Gannon]

--most of them.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:02
[Richard Nixon]

Well, who are they?

[Action note: Picture appears on screen.]

[Frank Gannon]

Well, there's a few exceptions, but--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:03
[Richard Nixon]

No, but who are they? Th--I mean [unintelligible] they're all--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:07
[Frank Gannon]

Chuck.

[Richard Nixon]

--programmed--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:08
[Frank Gannon]

Chuck.

[Richard Nixon]

--and packaged the same way.

[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:09
[Frank Gannon]

Chuck Percy.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:10
[Action note: Picture appears on screen.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:12
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:13
[Action note: Picture appears on screen.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:15
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:16
[Action note: Picture appears on screen.]

[Richard Nixon]

Well, you take George Bush. [Whispers:] He's not an--an interesting person.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:17
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:20
[Action note: Picture appears on screen.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:21
[Frank Gannon]

Yeah.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:22
[Richard Nixon]

Interesting person, isn't that it?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:25
[Frank Gannon]

That's what people--

[Richard Nixon]

Glenn.

[Frank Gannon]

That's what--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:26
[Richard Nixon]

Glenn is an interestin--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:27
[Frank Gannon]

Well, that's their big problem on their side. The only one--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:28
[Richard Nixon]

[Unintelligible.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:29
[Frank Gannon]

--who's got potential, I think, there is--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:30
[Nixon and Gannon in unison]

Hart.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:31
[Richard Nixon]

Mm-hmm. Cranston? Good God.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:36
[Offscreen voice]

Thirty seconds. [Unintelligible.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:37
[Richard Nixon]

It's ridiculous--shouldn't even be in the Senate.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:38
[Frank Gannon]

Fritz Hollings.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:39
[Richard Nixon]

Huh?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:40
[Frank Gannon]

Fritz Hollings--you can't--can't even understand him.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:42
[Richard Nixon]

Like [Bernie Maybank].

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:50
[Offscreen voice]

Five.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:55
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:57
[Frank Gannon]

How acri--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:01:59
[Offscreen voice]

[Unintelligible] want to take that again. Let's get--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:01
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

[Offscreen voice]

--over there to Frank's side and set up--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:03
[Action note: Picture appears on screen.]

[Offscreen voice]

[Unintelligible.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:08
[Richard Nixon]

I think the hair thing--they should be done properly, but what I was thinking with Downey was it looks so artificial--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:13
[Frank Gannon]

Artificial….

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:14
[Richard Nixon]

All pasted, you know, there's--he's got a bad hairdo man.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:18
[Frank Gannon]

Hm.

[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:19
[Richard Nixon]

I think. (Laughs.)

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:22
[Offscreen voice]

Two.

[Action note: Picture appears on screen.]

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:24
[Frank Gannon]

How acrimonious was the--the Kitchen Debate? Did--did he get mad at you? Did you get mad at him?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:31
[Richard Nixon]

No. I don't think it was a question of anger, certainly not on my part. After all, I was the host, and I didn't want to have an international incident on a goodwill trip, which this was supposed to be, basically.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:43
[Frank Gannon]

Di--

[Richard Nixon]

Uh--

[Frank Gannon]

You had to suppress that because you were the host, but did it--did it annoy you? Did you feel that he was going outside the--the--the bounds of propriety or protocol, or were you just fascinated by it?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:02:53
[Richard Nixon]

More the latter. I really expected him to be, as I said, very unpredictable and going to take advantage all the way that he possibly could. I recall one of the favorite anecdotes of Chancellor Adenauer. He said that Khrushchev was trying to bully him when Adenauer had been in Moscow, and when Adenauer--what--made what Adenauer thought was a very reasonable proposal. Khrushchev said, "You can go to hell." And Adenauer said, "Well, if I go to hell, you'll be there to meet me when I get there." And what he was really trying to tell me--Adenauer--by that anecdote was, "Don't let him get away with too much." And so what I had to do was find a way to respond, but nar--a way to respond without creating an international incident, and also one that would maintain my hospitality as a host. And I think I finally was able to accomplish that fairly well.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:03:54
[Frank Gannon]

Do--do you think he was genuinely out of control, or was it--was he calculating the effect of what he was doing as he was doing it?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:04:01
[Richard Nixon]

No question about the latter. He--he is a man that does not lose his temper. He uses his temper, and he did throughout. He puts on a show, but he is cold when it matters. He's also one who never really is under the influence of alcohol, or wasn't when he made any decisions. He's a pretty good drinker, but when it really mattered, after we had luncheon later, whenever we were having any substantive discussions out at the dacha--we sat there for four or five hours--five, six hours, as I recall, and he sipped hardly anything at all. When it really counts, he's cold sober, and when it really counts, as I say, he is not one that lets his temper run away with him. He was very calculating, and so he was deliberately, probably trying to provoke me, but also trying to show off, for the great numbers of the American press who were there, his belief that the Soviet Union, if it was behind the United States economically, was going to catch up because its system was superior. He believed that then, and, second, that as far as military strength is concerned, that he had missiles on the way that were going to give him superiority over the United States.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:05:16
[Frank Gannon]

Because the actual Kitchen Debate was spontaneous and unexpected, there is only a--the briefest--seven-, eight-second film clip of the two of you standing at the rail looking into the--into the kitchen. That became a fairly famous photograph or picture because of some of the--some of the other people involved.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:05:37
[Richard Nixon]

Well, that was where the real Kitchen Debate took place, not before the television cameras in the television studio that had been set up earlier that we've already seen. And there, as you will note from the photograph, you will see the man standing on his left I--is a young party worker. His name was Brezhnev. I didn't know till I met Brezhnev in 1972--I didn't know until then that Brezhnev was the man that was in that photograph, because when you go to the Soviet Union, at least at a high a level as I did, you--you don't talk to anybody but the top man, or two men, if--the case might be, if there is another one like a Kosygin along with a Brezhnev that you talked to. When I talked to Khrushchev, except for an occasional word with Mikoyan, one of his deputies, I didn't talk to anybody else. And so Brezhnev was there, and I didn't e--wasn't even aware of who he was. He didn't peep once during this whole conversation, but he watched it very, very closely and was fascinated by it, as I'm sure most everybody else was.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:06:44
[Frank Gannon]

You had done a lot of studying of Khrushchev, and you'd talked to Macmillan and Adenauer and Dulles and--and pored over C.I.A. and State Department profiles of him. Do you think he'd studied you? Do you think he'd done the same?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:07:00
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, I'm rather confident that he had. Not quite the same in one sense, though--he was going, certainly, to do that when he went to see President Eisenhower, and that trip was being laid on right while I was there in Moscow. But I was, after all, one that he knew was not able to negotiate with him. But I think he knew something about my background. He knew that I was a lawyer, for example. He knew that I had grown up in a relatively poor family, although he never liked to admit that I was as poor as he was at--on occasion. And he knew that I had been in the Congress, and he also knew that I had a reputation as being an anti-Communist, because he used to say to me, he said, "You know, y--you don't know anything about Communism," and so forth, "except the fear of it."

Day 4, Tape 2
00:07:51
[Frank Gannon]

"The fear of it," yes. That's--that's--that was e--uh--an exchange in the first debate, wasn't it?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:07:57
[Richard Nixon]

That was in the first debate, but when you come to--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:07:59
[Frank Gannon]

Didn't you--

[Richard Nixon]

--the second debate--

[Frank Gannon]

You told him he mustn't be afraid of ideas.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:08:01
[Richard Nixon]

Well, no. What I said was something a little different from that. I said, "Yes"--I sa--I indicated that there should be an exchange of ideas, and I said, "After all"-- and this is what really set him off--I said, "You don't know everything." And then he snapped right back, "Well, you don't know anything exc--about Communism except the fear of Communism." Coming back, though, to the Kitchen Debate, there, after having talked about the relative progress in color television in the first controversy, and then, after having talked about shopkeepers being thieves in the second, when we looked at the model grocery store, and after having talked about washing machines at the earlier part of the so-called Kitchen Debate, we finally got down to what this whole visit was about, as it finally turned out. And that was the relative military strength of the United States and the Soviet Union, a--and it was there that he insisted th--that, as far as their missile strength was concerned, that they were strong. He accused us, the United States, of attempting to use our strength in order to blackmail him and bull--bulldoze him and so forth and so on, and it was s--simply a hammer-and-tongs interchange with regard to the relative military strength of the Soviet Union and the United States. The point that I made, however--and again, I felt it was very important to emphasize this rather than to get into a debate as to who had the most missiles or the most planes or the most submarines--the point I made was that that missed the point, that what really mattered was that we should recognize that both were strong and that that was the basis, then, for negotiation from the basis of equality. But it was very hard to get across to him, because he f--kept repeating that our military people did not accept that proposition, that all they wanted was superiority.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:10:08
[Frank Gannon]

Did you get the sense--or at what point did you get the sense that this was political dynamite for you, that this confrontation with the leader of the Soviet Union was going to have a tremendous political impact at home, where you were already gearing up for the presidential election in two years?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:10:24
[Richard Nixon]

No, I didn't have that feeling at the time. Frankly, all I was doing was simply counterpunching. I wasn't going for a knockout. And, under the circumstances, therefore, I didn't have any time to think about whether it's going to have some political effect in the United States. I just wanted to be sure that I properly represented the view of the administration, the views of President Eisenhower, and the position of the American people in this first historic meeting with the leader of the Soviet Union. And also that I did not get engaged in, and I repeat again--to meeting him on his ground, of arguing about who had the most, et cetera, and who threatened the other, but trying to put it over on our ground, that that was beside the point, that we both had to recognize that we were strong, a--and respect each other for that strength, and then negotiate on areas like Berlin, which was then the major subject of confrontation between the two.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:11:21
[Frank Gannon]

At the dacha on the river, after the boat ride, you came up and saw long tables sat under the trees for luncheon, almost a Chekhovian scene, peaceful, bucolic--and as the luncheon progressed, he--he began an eerie nuclear confrontation.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:11:45
[Richard Nixon]

Well, before the nuclear confrontation evolved, we should point out that he was the perfect host. He joked with Mikoyan, who was seated beside Mrs. Nixon, and he noted that sh--he was--Mikoyan was talking to her, and he said, "Look, you crafty Armenian, don't you try to monopolize Mrs. Nixon," and then he put a--drew his line across the table between Mrs. Nixon and Mikoyan, and he said, "Look. This is an iron curtain. Don't you step across it. She belongs to me." So I though--thing--was thinking this was going to be a very pleasant meeting, and that, after we finished our lunch--that he and I would probably go to one of the conference rooms in the dacha and have a meeting. But it didn't work out that way. The conversation went on and on. Incidentally, we were well prepared for it, however, or at least I say forti--that we were fortified, because one of the earlier courses was a great delicacy. He described it to me as being frozen Siberian whitefish, and he said that it was Stalin's favorite fish because it gave him steel in his backbone. And he took a couple of helpings of it, and I took a couple of helpings at w--as well. I think it helped--it helped us both to survive four hours of conversation which was toe-to-toe all the way.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:13:06
[Frank Gannon]

Wasn't this--wasn't this fish that--in fact, was raw and had rotted, and that the s--one of the reasons it was supposed to put steel up your backbone was because, if you could stand the smell--that you--you could stand anything?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:13:20
[Richard Nixon]

I didn't notice the smell particularly. All I noticed is that we loaded it down with onions, and it didn't make any difference how it tasted.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:13:27
[Frank Gannon]

How do you handle, when you're, say, in the Mideast, and sheep's eye is presented to you as the--the guest of honor? Do you eat it--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:13:33
[Richard Nixon]

Eat it.

[Frank Gannon]

--with relish?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:13:35
[Richard Nixon]

Eat it. That's right.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:13:36
[Frank Gannon]

Or with onions?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:13:37
[Richard Nixon]

That's right--eat it with relish. I've eaten sheep's eyes. In--in China, as a matter of fact, on one occasion I recall having their famous mao-tai. It was green, and after I had had some of it--this was in one of the provinces--my host, with a delightful look in his eye, said, "Well, that had snake's venom in it." So--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:14:04
[Frank Gannon]

Did it make you meaner?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:14:05
[Richard Nixon]

No.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:14:06
[Frank Gannon]

Have you had Rocky Mountain oysters?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:14:08
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, yes. I've had that in the United States, in the Ozarks. And, incidentally, they're very good. They--they taste like scallops, really. I mean, they--they're very nice.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:14:21
[Frank Gannon]

What--what happened during this dacha conversation?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:14:26
[Richard Nixon]

Well, what happened was that, after we got past some of the amenities at the beginning, he then began to carry on where we had left off in the so-called Kitchen Debate about the relative strength of the United States and the Soviet Union, and I think--well, we went into a number of areas. Insofar as missiles are concerned, he made, to me--what to me was a very, in a way, frightening statement or observation. He said that he favored having--developing missiles and relying on them rather than airplanes. He said the difficulty with airplanes and using pilots to drop bombs is that you have the human factor, and sometimes a pilot might not want to drop an atomic bomb. He says, "With missiles, you don't have that human factor. You just fire them. It's very m--much more impersonal." Then he went on to say that he had no use for navies whatever. He said, "I--in the missile age," he said, "navies are going to become obsolete." He said, "Ships will simply be fodder for sharks." He always spoke in very colorful terms. The same was true of aircraft. He said, "As far as aircraft are concerned, they're going to become irrelevant as well." He says, "They’ll just be sitting ducks for the missiles that we're going to develop." So he talked in pretty frightening t--terms, incidentally, with regard to missile strength and the rest.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:15:57
[Frank Gannon]

What were your impressions of the Soviet people that you met on this trip?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:16:03
[Richard Nixon]

You're talking about the leaders?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:16:04
[Frank Gannon]

No, the--the p--the people--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:16:05
[Richard Nixon]

Yeah.

[Frank Gannon]

--themselves, outside of the--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:16:08
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I think I have often made the point that, when we talk about Communist leaders and the people who live in the countries that they lead, we must always differentiate. As a matter of fact, you've got to take the leader and look at him as two pe--as two people. He is a Communist and, in the case of Russia, he is a Russian, and sometimes he acts like a Russian and sometimes like a Communist. You must have in mind always that, when things really count, he's going to be a lot more Communist than he is Russian.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:16:42
[Frank Gannon]

Were you prepared for the reaction that you got in Poland on your way home?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:16:47
[Richard Nixon]

No, not at all, and in fact we didn’t expect any kind of reaction at all in Poland, because we had understood before we stopped there that the Polish government had not published the parade route--the motorcade route, I should say--from the airport to the guest house that we were going to stay in, and it was a Sunday. We thought that most of the people, on their one day off a week, would be doing something other than coming out and gawking at a vice president coming in after a trip to Moscow. And the first indication that I got that it would be a little different there than it had been in Moscow--let me say, parenthetically, that when we got out of Moscow on that trip, we found that in Leningrad and in [Nova Sibersk] in the heart of Siberia, and also in Sverdlovsk--we found a great outpouring of warmth from the Russian people, as distinguished from the leaders themselves. In any event, the first indication that I got that it was going to be different in Poland was when the honor guard, the Polish honor guard, were loaded on a fatbeg--flatbed truck, and, as we were leaving the airport to drive into the city, I saw the honor guard personnel--some of them were clapping, and some of them were holding up the "V" sign, like that. And I just thought, as I went by them, that they wouldn’t be very reliable troops in the event that there was a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. And then, once we got into the streets, something hit the side of the car, and I thought it might have been a stone or something of that sort, because it had been in Caracas just a year before, but it was a bouquet of roses, and then flowers began to pelt the motorcade all the way in. There was a quarter of a million people there, totally spontaneous. Those who observe it, and I agree--while it was not the biggest crowd we have been welcomed by, it was certainly the most emotional that I have ever seen, and one that moved us beyond belief.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:18:56
[Frank Gannon]

Were the Polish leaders embarrassed by it?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:18:58
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, yes. I think they were very embarrassed, and somewhat surprised, because they didn't want--not because, I think, really, they would have minded having their people welcome an American in that way, but also primarily because they didn't want to irritate the Russians, because what had happened is Khrushchev had just been in Poland about a few weeks before that, and they had tried to put on a big welcome for him, and it was very amusing that, when members of the press asked the people that had thrown flowers into the cars--asked them about it, they said that--"This time we bought our own flowers." The other time, when Khrushchev came in, the state had bought the flowers for them and told them to throw them into the cars, and some of them didn't even throw them in then. It's the old story, too--you can really tell about the difference between crowds. I remember in 1974, when we went into Cairo. There was a huge crowd, over a million people on the way from the airport and to the guest house, and they were cheering and chanting and smiling and laughing, and Sadat said to me, he says, "They are cheering for you. They're cheering for the United States." He says, "You know, we can always get out a crowd, but you can't make them smile." And so it was in Poland. This was a smiling crowd, but not all smiling. I would say hundreds of them had tears running down their cheeks, because they were simply moved with joy that an American was there. There's a strong feeling among the Polish people about Americans generally, probably because so many of their relatives live in the United States.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:20:40
[Frank Gannon]

What do you think you represented to them?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:20:42
[Richard Nixon]

Hope. Hope that they might have an opportunity someday not to have a Soviet-controlled or subsidized government imposed upon themselves, a--and also respect and affection. They--the United States to them is a nation that offers freedom, hope--it's what they would like their own country to be.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:21:07
[Frank Gannon]

When Khrushchev made his visit to the United States the next year, I think he made it clear on several occasions that you were not one of his very favorite people.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:21:16
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, yes. He took every opportunity to embarrass me, as the case might be. Right from the time we met in the White House in the Oval Office with the--President Eisenhower, he said to President Eisenhower that, while he didn't have any question about President Eisenhower's desire for peace, he did have a question about my desire for peace. He didn't say that specifically, but he said, "Some of the people around you--we don't have that same confidence," and he glared at me in the process. The same was true in--when we went up to Camp David. We got up there, and we were meeting with President Eisenhower in Aspen, which is the presidential cottage there, and Khrushchev was very belligerent as long as I was present because he felt that I had not been friendly in speeches that I had made to the American Legion and the V.F.W. two weeks before he arrived there, because I had referred to my own visit to the Soviet Union and so forth. What he missed, the point he missed, was that in those speeches I had urged those organizations, both of which were going to pass resolutions condemning his visit--I had urged them to give him a friendly welcome. But he just overlooked that and considered to me--to be beyond the pale in that respect, and, consequently, President Eisenhower very properly suggested that I not participate in the meetings thereafter, but it was just the--more of the same then. He was just as tough with Eisenhower as he was with me. The famous Eisenhower smile and so f--didn't work, which was no surprise to Eisenhower. He was a pretty realistic fellow. Incidentally, we had one amusing anecdote in that respect. We were having luncheon, and I was trying to, you know, lighten things up a bit after a very heavy conversation had occurred previously, and I asked Khrushchev, I said, "Where do you go on your vacations?" He says, "I like to go to the Crimea," and President Eisenhower said, "Well, I always liked to go down to Georgia, like to play golf," and so forth. He says, "The only problem, though, is that when I go on vacation I am always interrupted by the telephone." Translation was made, and Khrushchev took umbrage about that. He says, "Well, we have telephones in the Soviet Union, too. We don't have as many as you do, but we're going to have more. We'll pass you in that way, too." So, you see, every opportunity--he had this inferiority complex, and he was determined to show that the Soviet Union, while behind now, was going to prevail in the end and pass the United States, as he put it.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:23:56
[Frank Gannon]

What was Eisenhower's impression of this rather spontaneous and belligerent man?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:24:04
[Richard Nixon]

Well, his im--impression was that of a realist, I would say. He had to listen to those--and there were some of his advisors who felt that maybe, just maybe--that he could reassure Khrushchev and dispel some of the doubts that Khrushchev had about the U--United States thr--being a threat to him. But Eisenhower saw through it very soon. After the Camp David meeting, and they were unable to get any kind of a statement out--well, the statement they got out later was referred to as "The Spirit of Camp David," which was a nothing thing. They couldn't agree on anything. Eisenhower, frankly, gave up on him.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:24:45
[Frank Gannon]

Rather than dispelling his doubts about whether we might have been a threat to him, wouldn't it have been better to reinforce those concerns?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:24:54
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, let me make it very clear. I think, after Eisenhower had gone the extra mile in making it clear that we s--were seeking peaceful resolution in Berlin and other issues, that Eisenhower, by that cold manner of his, which he makes very apparent at times, left no doubt in Khrushchev's mind that Eisenhower was not one that could be pushed around. But I would say the main thing that impressed Khrushchev was sending him around the United States, because he was enormously impressed, I am sure, by the thousands and thousands of cars that he saw in parking lots, by the b--the houses that he saw, et cetera. By the--he came back convinced that the United States was not a paper tiger. And, incidentally, he passed that on to the Chinese, and that may have been one of the reasons for the Sino-Soviet split, although there were others as well.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:25:52
[Frank Gannon]

How did--in these meetings, how did Eisenhower's cool manner reflect itself?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:26:00
[Richard Nixon]

Well, more by what he didn't say than what he did say. Eisenhower was not one to engage in a lot of rhetoric with people, but he would just become--when he didn't agree, he'd just put on the silent act. He was very--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:26:16
[Frank Gannon]

Did it have an effect on Khrushchev? Did he seem to withdraw, or--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:26:19
[Richard Nixon]

Khrushchev didn't know what to do with it. He--uh--I was not present at all the meetings, of course. I was only present at the initial ones, but from the--what I had heard later, Eisenhower just felt that he was intransigent, and so he gave up on that--at least--diplomacy course at the present time.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:26:42
[Frank Gannon]

Is it true that you have the distinction of being the man who introduced Khrushchev to Allen Dulles, the director of the C.I.A., and J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the F.B.I.?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:26:51
[Richard Nixon]

Yes. As a matter of fact, that was at a dinner, and they were both invited to it, at the White House--a state dinner. And I remember when I introduced him to Hoover, he immediately perked up, and he says, "I think we know some of the same people." I think the reason he said that was that Hoover, of course, is well known--had always told the Congress that he had people planted within the Soviet K.G.B.--a double agent.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:27:21
[Frank Gannon]

Did he, do you think?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:27:22
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, y--no question about it. Well, as a matter of fact, Hoover used to tell me that, both before the presidential years and even before that, that they had a man, a s--a--a double agent, who used to bring a hundred thousand dollars a year to the Communist Party in the United States. That was his job to bring it. He was the bag man. Now, on the other hand, that man might have been a double agent the other way, too. So who knows what. But I think it was a very astute comment on Khrushchev's part. "We know some of the same people, so don't trust anybody."

Day 4, Tape 2
00:28:05
[Frank Gannon]

Was there--was there u--unified support behind the trip? Was John Foster Dulles, for example, in favor of Khrushchev's coming here?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:28:12
[Richard Nixon]

Well, Dulles by that time was no longer living, of course. The decision with regard to his coming here was made later. Dulles did support my going there, because he had been present at a meeting I had had at the [F Street Club], the--a fine private club in Washington, where Mikoyan was present, and he felt that I had handled myself rather well in a, quote, "debate," or discussion, with Mikoyan, a very clever, intelligent, tough-minded second man to Khrushchev. And m--and Dulles gave me excellent advice with regard to handle--how to handle the meetings when I got to Khrushchev. He was the one who said over and over again, he said, "I could not agree more with those," because all sorts of columns were written when it was announced I was going to go to Russia--that if I could only reassure them--reassure the Russians that we were for peace and dispel some of their fears that they were being encircled and the rest, that that would be--that would serve the cause of peace. And Dulles--it was he who said, "Don't ever believe that." He said, "They"--he said, "We don't have to convince them we're for peace. They know that."

Day 4, Tape 2
00:29:32
[Frank Gannon]

Khrushchev later said that he had done everything he could to defeat you in the race for president in 1960. What do you think he meant by that?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:29:42
[Richard Nixon]

I think one of the things he meant, apparently, was that he did not release some American crewmen, a flight crew that had come down in the Soviet Union when they got off course, and under the circumstances that might have had some effect. I mean, had he released them before the election, that could have helped. I think another point that wa--he was perhaps making was that, after the U-2 incident--that he did not go forward with the plans to have Eisenhower visit the Soviet Union. I think, incidentally, that that was a great loss. I think Eisenhower would have had a great ef--impact in the Soviet Union, and I think the reason that Khrushchev had it knocked over--my bis--visit had been quite effective--I think he feared having Eisenhower come to the Soviet Union for the impact that Eisenhower would have on the Russian people. And so I think the--also Khrushchev felt that his conduct when he was in this country, conduct indicating that he couldn't get along with me, might frighten American people to voting against me, because of the fear that I couldn't get along with Khrushchev. I remember Mrs. Herter, the wife of s--who--who succeeded Dulles, Secretary Chris Herter, a former congressman--that she said to me on one occasion--this is before the election--that she, in talking to many of her friends, had heard over and over again the concern expressed that, because Khrushchev and I didn't get along, that we might not be able to make progress toward peace. And, of course, that missed the point altogether. Getting along with Khrushchev does not mean being belligerent, whether it's with him or any other Russian leader, but it does mean being strong. War is going to come, or defeat without war, which is the greater likelihood, not because we are strong but because we are weak and because we give the impression to the Soviet leaders that they can make gains without some cost to them. It's only when they become determined that the cost of war is going to be far greater than anything they could gain that we will have any meaningful negotiations to reduce its danger.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:32:06
[Frank Gannon]

If you had to lay odds on the likelihood of a major great-power war, say, in the next twenty years, what would you--what odds would you choose?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:32:15
[Richard Nixon]

I don't think there's going to be a war. I wouldn't want to bet on such a thing, because it's--I don't want to lose that bet, or win it, for that matter. I don't think there's going to be a major war for a number of reasons. First, because taking the Soviet leaders at their most aggressive worst, whatever that may be--they are not fools. They are not madmen. A--an Andropov is not a Hitler, just as Brezhnev was not and Khrushchev was not. So, I think, under the circumstances, we're going to find that they have some incentive to avoid war. They want to conquer the world. They want Communism to dominate the world, but not a world of destroyed cities a--and of dead bodies. So they want to win without war. That is what they're trying to do, and that is the great danger that we confront. Now, having said that I do not believe there will be a war, there are two conditions. One, that the United States continue to develop the military strength across the board that will deter Soviet military action. And second, and this is even more critical, in the peripheral areas--I'm referring to the Mideast, to Latin America and to Southeast Asia, as distinguished from Europe, where I think-- there will not be a major Soviet offensive there--in those peripheral areas, to find ways in which the United States and the Soviet Union can negotiate about their differences there, having in mind the fact that we're never going to agree. All we can ever agree upon with the Soviet is how can we be adversaries without allur--lowing our adversarial relationship to escalate into war. And that is possible.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:34:10
[Frank Gannon]

You say that Khrushchev and Brezhnev and Andropov are not crazed like Hitler was. Are they less evil than he was?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:34:24
[Richard Nixon]

In the sense that certainly what we--what we would call Hitler's mania with regard to the Holocaust that was visited upon the Jewish population not only of the so--of Germany but the rest of Europe--you do not have that mania in the Soviet Union, although they are anti-Semitic. Most of the Russian leaders that I have met, deep down, are anti-Semitic. As far as repression is concerned, I do not think that the Soviet Union is--has been any less repressive that Hitler's Germany was. Millions have been killed by Stalin. In later years, however, not as much. So, consequently, it's changed to that extent.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:35:17
[Frank Gannon]

How would the Soviet leaders you've met and dealt with indicate or demonstrate their anti-Semitism?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:35:26
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, just by a comment here and there, but not so much by what they did demonstrate but by--wait a minute. Why don't you repeat that question, because I don't think that makes the point. Make it again.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:35:43
[Frank Gannon]

How did the Soviet leaders that you've met indicate or express or demonstrate their anti-Semitism?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:35:51
[Richard Nixon]

Nothing in what they said, but really in what they did. In terms of their attitude toward Jewish emigration, they--they simply set up barriers which were almost impossible to overcome, and I would say that as far as the progress we made during the period of so-called détente, that there we'd had considerable success, but only because we convinced them that it was in their interest to lower the barriers which allowed Jews to emigrate so that they could accomplish progress on other fronts. I just used to make privately, and--in every meeting I had with them in '72, '73, and '74, I would emphasize the point that their intransigence on Jewish emigration had a very detrimental effect on my ability to get support for progress in other areas that had to do with détente. And that had its effect, because when we came into office, for example, in 1969, the year before only six hundred Jews were allowed to emigrate. In 1973, it got up to thirty thousand. In 1974, of course, it went down again because the Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which openly conditioned Jewish emigration on Soviet conduct. And that was a mistake.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:37:20
[Frank Gannon]

You were under tremendous domestic political pressure to raise that issue. Considered objectively, do you think that the issue of Jewish emigration was important enough to have used it to sort of pull in your détente chips on that issue?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:37:37
[Richard Nixon]

I was interested in results. I wasn't interested in making a big political ploy out of the fact that I was hammering on the table in my meetings with Brezhnev and demanding that Jews be allowed to emigrate. I knew that doing that would have a counterproductive effect, and it has had a counterproductive effect. It did have whenever that kind of practice was followed. I knew the best way to get them to cooperate would be to do it privately, very, very firmly, but making it clear that it was in their interest, because of their concern about progress on other issues, to be more liberal insofar as emigration was concerned. I was never able to get that across to most of the people in the American Jewish community, unfortunately, and never got much credit for what we were able to accomplish, because sometimes, I'm afraid, people would prefer to have the issue rather than progress in doing--in resolving the issue.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:38:34
[Frank Gannon]

If it weren't for the domestic political pressure, would you have raised it? Would you have considered it--with Brezhnev? Would you have considered it objectively an important enough issue to have taken a lot of time and to have demanded or required or made it a condition for other concessions--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:38:53
[Richard Nixon]

Well, lets--

[Frank Gannon]

--or other arrangements?

[Richard Nixon]

Let's--let's make it very clear, I never made it a condition. I didn’t believe it should be a condition. It was an internal matter within the Soviet Union. However, I did feel that, under the circumstances, it was important, from a very personal standpoint, knowing the situation there, from a moral standpoint, to make progress on it. And I thought it was in the interest of the Soviet Union itself to make progress on that issue.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:39:22
[Frank Gannon]

Getting back to the 1960 election, you say that your ability to get along with Khrushchev really had nothing to do with your ability to--to lead the--the country, or the w--the two countries, to war or peace. But that would have been a very potent political issue, the idea that Khrushchev had spread the word through his actions or through his words that he couldn't get along with you, that therefore you would be a risky leader. Was that used against you in the campaign? Was that an issue, or did the Kennedy forces spread that word? Mrs. Herter was on your side, but if it reached that level, it must have reached the other side.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:39:55
[Richard Nixon]

No, as a matter of fact, when Khrushchev told Kennedy that he, in effect--had supported Kennedy in the campaign and voted for him and so forth and so on, I think he really meant what he had said, that he did favor Kennedy over me, because he had taken my measure, and he was convinced that, while I might turn out to be reasonable, I would be very, very hard to push over. He would never have tried with me what he did to Kennedy at Vienna, you know, where--when Kennedy met with him in their first, and, as a matter of fact, their only summit. He would never have been able to do that with me. But, be that as it may, I do not think it had a detrimental effect as far as that very close campaign in 1960 was concerned. It might have had the contrary effect, because when Kennedy raised the issue that the United States--that President Eisenhower ought to consider apologizing to Khrushchev for the U-2 incident, I was able to nail him on that issue, and he had to with--back down from it. No, the American people in 1960 weren't that dovish. They wanted a strong president. As a matter of fact, ironically, Kennedy gained not from being more dovish than I did, but from appearing to be more hawkish on the issue of Cuba, because in our last debate, as some will recall, he m--a--advocated that the United States should support the forces of liberation inside and outside of Cuba, and I had to take the position, which was against what I really believed, that the United States shouldn't do that, because I knew we were already doing it. It was a covert C.I.A. operation, which later ended up in the disaster of the Bay of Pigs, because it wasn't carried out the way that Eisenhower had laid it down. And I think that that very issue--any--any one of a number of issues could make a difference of--of the twelve-thousand-votes shift that would have determined a different president in 1960, but that very issue certainly disconcerted some of my strong anti-Communist supporters, when they thought that I was softer on Castro than Kennedy, and it was just the other way around.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:42:09
[Frank Gannon]

What happened when Kennedy and Khrushchev met in Vienna?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:42:14
[Richard Nixon]

I was, of course, not privy to the conversations, but I did read a report by James Reston on it, and Reston said that Khrushchev was--was brutal, belligerent, as he had been in this picture that we saw here, and that it shook Kennedy. Now, Reston was a supporter of President Kennedy, and I don't mean that Kennedy was frightened, but I do mean that it caused him considerable concern, and, under the circumstances, he had to regain and recoup in some way, and that may have been one of the reasons why the Cuban confrontation became absolutely essential. He couldn't leave an impression, after that meeting kin--in Vienna, that Khrushchev could bully him.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:43:06
[Frank Gannon]

The--it's--it's widely believed that Khrushchev took away the impression from that meeting that Kennedy was, in fact, not a strong leader, and that that--that did lead him to--to probe and to test further.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:43:17
[Richard Nixon]

To put the missiles into Cuba.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:43:19
[Frank Gannon]

If you had been president in 1961, he would have had prior experience with you and would have known that you were not that way. Does it follow that there wouldn't have been a Cuban missile crisis? Does it also follow, from what you've said, that there would have been a Bay of Pigs, but it would have been successful, because you would have gone--carried it out as it was f--originally planned?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:43:38
[Richard Nixon]

Well, of course, I'm not the best witness on that. Certainly the Bay of Pigs would have been carried out very differently. Once we committed the United States, we would certainly not have allowed that particular venture to fail, particularly when it's right next door. There was no excuse. It wasn't many, many miles away. It was right next door, and we had the capability within the area through air support and so forth to make that succeed. And once we had taken that step--and Eisenhower had that same view. He said he would never have approved an operation of that sort without air support. As far as the Cuban confrontation is concerned, my guess is that Khrushchev would have been quite unlikely to have tried to sneak missiles into Cuba if he felt that he had to deal with me. And, incidentally, after that confrontation, Kennedy's hand was strengthened with Khrushchev. Let me say, in that respect, too, when you look at the difference between Khrushchev and Brezhnev, my guess is that Brezhnev would not have put missiles into Cuba. K--Khrushchev was a--a greater gambler. He was more emotional--he--then--and--more emotional and more of a risk-taker than Brezhnev. Brezhnev was more cautious. That would be my guess, just in retrospect.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:45:08
[Frank Gannon]

Why did Kennedy, who was not--not weak in terms of his perception of the Communist threat and was a military man himself and was not im--averse to the application of force--why did he let the Bay of Pigs fail?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:45:23
[Richard Nixon]

Bad advice. I think that if he had followed his own instincts, he would never have let it fail. But he caught a lot of hell from his more liberal advisors. They were divided on it, Adlai Stevenson and some of the rest, and so, under the circumstances, Kennedy felt that--well, once it became known that it was an American-supported initiative--that we mustn't go too far. And that, of course, is a great, great mistake. I remember Churchill wrote in his volume on the First World War--multi-volume work on the First World War--he said that a commander in war can either follow a policy of audacity or one of caution, but he cannot find--he--he must not follow one that tries to be both. And in this case, the audacious policy was the only one that could succeed there. And by mixing it with the policy of restraint, it failed on both sides.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:46:24
[Frank Gannon]

You had known Kennedy for numbers of years. Was it characteristic of him to vacillate and--and take indeci--or to be indecisive and to--t--t--to sort of mix conflicting advice and come out with a--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:46:38
[Richard Nixon]

No, not characteristic at all.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:46:40
[Frank Gannon]

Why did he do--

[Richard Nixon]

I think it was --I think it was--

[Frank Gannon]

--it, then, on the most important issue--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:46:44
[Richard Nixon]

It wasn't characteristic. It would have been characteristic, for example, of Adlai Stevenson. Adlai Stevenson, basically, was a Hamlet-like person. He--he--he always commiserated about and talked about and--all these decisions, the difficult decisions he had to make, and so forth. He--he was very thoughtful, but it was very hard for him to decide anything. Eisenhower was a decisive man. He made great decisions, not in--not off the top of his head and not impetuously, but, after consideration, he decided something, and it was done. Kennedy was also decisive, but Kennedy in those early years sat on what I would say--a somewhat schizophrenic group of advisors. Some were hawkish, so to speak--those who supported, for example, what he said in his inaugural speech to the effect--"We will fight anyplace, anywhere in defense of freedom," and so forth, and when he went to Berlin--"We are all Berliners," and so forth and so on. Now, these were very strong statements, in fact, statements that put the United States on the line, perhaps in areas that we would not be able to--even to support--we didn't have the ability to do so, but they were made. On the other hand, he had advisors who felt that this was the time to have a more conciliatory attitude toward the Soviet Union, and Kennedy in those early period--in that early period, I think, ran into that problem. And President Johnson had the same problem. Some of Kennedy's more dovish advisors stayed on with Johnson, and Johnson, as a result, reaped the detriments of both worlds by failing to have a policy that was aggressive enough and strong enough to bring the war in Vietnam to a successful conclusion earlier.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:48:37
[Frank Gannon]

Did you try to get to President Kennedy either with advice about how to deal with Khrushchev based on your experience or to urge him to follow through on the Bay of Pigs plan as it had originally been conceived?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:48:48
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I saw him right after the Bay of Pigs, and he asked what would--what would h--I recommend, and I said, "Well, I would go in now." I said--I said, "I would find some reason to go in--for example, perhaps something that--th--th--that the--that Castro is doing to our base there in Cuba or something of that sort, but find some reason to go in." But I said, "I would certainly try to find a way to go in now." And Kennedy said he had thought of that, but that some of his advisors had urged him not to do so because they thought that Khrushchev was in a very, very cocky mood at the moment and that, if we did something in Cuba, he might do something in Berlin. Now, the point about all that, where I think his advisors were wrong, is that Khrushchev was not a madman either. He was one that would take risks. He was bold, but, on the other hand, he at that time knew that the United States had a preemptive first-strike capability against the Soviet Union. Despite all of his huffing and puffing about his missiles, we had at least a fifteen-to-one advantage in the Kennedy years, and we were looking down their throat. He wouldn't about--have gone into Berlin or anyplace else knowing that the United States could knock out his nuclear capability with a preemptive strike. And so I think that those that were s--were frightened or fearful of what Khrushchev would do simply missed the mark. He was going to talk big, but when it came to action, he would never have called Kennedy's hand--not in Berlin and certainly not in Cuba.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:50:26
[Frank Gannon]

There's a fascinating short film of you taken in the Oval Office with Kennedy when you went to visit him at the time of the Bay of Pigs. How--what kind of spirits did you find him in? Was he--was he up, or was he depressed? Was he worried?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:50:41
[Richard Nixon]

Well, he was worried, of course, im--as he--as--expectedly. He was--and, of course, he was looking at some of the things that had gone wrong, and he was really taking off at his advisors, and I w--didn't blame him a bit. He thought that he'd gotten bad advice from the military, he'd gotten bad advice from the C.I.A., and everybody else. But Allen Dulles, you know, when he saw me the day of the Bay of Pigs, in fact, the day before I saw Kennedy in the Oval Office--he took the r--responsibility, as--and the blame, as any big man would. He said, "I almost told the president." And I [sic] said, "I will never forgive myself for not doing it. I almost told him that if he makes this decision to go in, it must not fail. But I didn't do so."

Day 4, Tape 2
00:51:37
[Frank Gannon]

Do you believe that he didn't, in fact, tell him?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:51:40
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, yes. Yeah. I think he did not tell him. No, because there was no question--Allen Dulles was in a very emotional state at that time. I remember he came to the door. He was coming there to brief me because I was going to take a trip later, abroad. And I asked him if he'd like a drink, and I said, "I certainly need one." I didn't know at that time it had failed, and I said, "Well, what has happened?" And I [sic] said, "This is the blackest day in my life. The whole operation has failed. We have lost everything." He did make the point, too--he said, "Now, Kennedy was very courageous in overruling some of his dovish advisors and going in in the first place." And then he, Allen Dulles, took the responsibility. He says, "I didn't tell him that it must not fail, and I should've."

Day 4, Tape 2
00:52:24
[Frank Gannon]

How would things have been different if the Bay of Pigs invasion had succeeded?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:52:32
[Richard Nixon]

Well, it's rather iffy to even speculate about such a question. Certainly it would have meant that we wouldn't have the problems we have today in Central America. After all, it isn't what Castro's done to Cuba. It's the fact of what Castro has done outside of Cuba. Cuba is a Soviet base in the Americas, and so he is exporting his revolution and making trouble in Central America and other n--countries. And also Castro is a willing proxy puppet of the Soviet Union. Why are Cuban trip--troops in Angola? Why are they in Ethiopia? Why are they in other countries in Africa? Who's paying for it? The Russians. And if you didn't have Castro there--he is the best puppet the Soviet have got. If you didn't have him there, the world would be very different.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:53:28
[Frank Gannon]

It's--it's still hard to figure out why Kennedy, who was a strong and decisive man and who knew that his presidency, the early reputation of his presidency, was on the line, allowed himself, after the thing began to clearly fail, to be pulled back and forth still by these schizo--by the schizophrenia of his advisors, especially when you consider that someone like Stevenson--according to a number of the memoirs and records of the time, he had great contempt for Stevenson's Hamlet-like qualities and had put him off in the U.N. so that he would be harmless there. Why did Kennedy have what appears to be a failure of will or decisiveness on this most crucial, vital hemispheric issue?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:54:11
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I--I can't say why, but I--I think that is the best explanation. I--I know that his failure to act there was not because he himself was not a decisive person. He's a strong, tough fellow. There was no question about that. He was tough in his campaigning. His war record would indicate that, certainly, a--and I don't think there's any question that, if he had followed his own intuitions, it would have turned out very differently. But he didn't do so.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:54:39
[Frank Gannon]

Did he pay attention to his presidency? Is it possible that this issue just sort of crept up on him? As a lot of people claim that he never really focused initially--again, was torn by his advisors on Vietnam, and it wasn't until what turned out to be shortly before his death, after the Diem coup, that he really began to focus on Vietnam, and a--a number of the Kennedy supporters say that he would have been very decisive in getting out of it. He would have--when he had focused on it, he would have seen that it was a bad thing, and he would have got out. Is it arguable that he just wasn't concentrating on the Bay of Pigs until it was too late?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:55:12
[Richard Nixon]

I suppose it's arguable, but--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:55:14
[Frank Gannon]

Was that characteristic--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:55:15
[Richard Nixon]

I'm not an ex--

[Frank Gannon]

--of him?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:55:17
[Richard Nixon]

I wouldn't think it would be characteristic, and I would not go along with those who try to say that, if Kennedy had only understood what Vietnam was all about, he wouldn't have gone in or wouldn't have got out--or he would have gotten out. He was a world thinker. I know that from knowing him long before he was president. He didn't think in small terms, in parochial terms. He knew how important Vietnam was and that our failing there could have massive effects on other parts of the world. He knew that the war in Vietnam wasn't about Vietnam, but it was about Southeast Asia generally, and about our relations with the rest of Asia, and I just don't believe that his--that those who are trying to say that he was misled on--and he was misled and thereby misled the country into supporting the Vietnamese government, sending the first sixteen thousand combat troops there. I--I don't go along with that at all.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:56:20
[Frank Gannon]

Did Kennedy ever talk to you about Stevenson?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:56:23
[Richard Nixon]

No. No.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:56:26
[Frank Gannon]

One of the diplomatic hot potatoes that was thrown you in the--at the end of the Eisenhower administration was meeting Castro when he came to Washington. What were your impressions of him? What kind of a person, man, did you find him to be?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:56:41
[Richard Nixon]

Charismatic, intelligent, strong, and also one who had a total lack of understanding of how the--how an economy works, one who, I wrote afterwards in a report to President Eisenhower, who was either a Communist or totally naïve about Communism. And I quickly reached the conclusion it was the first.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:57:15
[Frank Gannon]

What made you reach that conclusion?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:57:17
[Richard Nixon]

What he did, his conduct in Cuba, his failing to go forward with regard to elections, his actions against those who had opposed him, the show trials, everything that he did. In other words, there was no question about where he stood.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:57:41
[Frank Gannon]

Wasn't there a lot of anti-Castroism, though, before that became clear in America? A lot of people didn't want to meet him when he came pres--at that time--a lot of political leaders, including the president. And you were sort of sent to feel him out and get--get an impression. Do you think that, if he had been treated differently, if he'd been accorded more honor and respect and his revolution praised instead of condemned or ignored, that he might have, if not become an ally, at least become a neutral?

Day 4, Tape 2
00:58:10
[Richard Nixon]

Well. we hear that sort of nonsense about Nicaragua, that if only we had treated the new government, the Sandinistas, properly, that they would not have been tilting toward the Soviet Union and so forth and so on and not have been Communists. We hear the same thing with regard to the Soviet Union after World War II, that if only we had been more tolerant and not made them fearful of us, that then they would have come along and helped us build a new era of peace and prosperity and communication in Europe. And on Castro--that if only we had treated him properly--the same with Allende and Cuba--that we could have weaned him away from the Communist support. And that isn't the real world, because when you look at Castro's background, how he came to power, and who supported him in that period, there's no question that Castro, in retrospect, was a dedicated Communist operative from the beginning. And there's nothing that we could have done that would have changed that.

Day 4, Tape 2
00:59:27
[Frank Gannon]

It's been written that you were one of the principal--

Day 4, Tape 2
00:59:27
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

The following text appears in the original transcript but does not appear on a tape. It has not been edited.

[Frank Gannon]

--it's been written that you were one of the principal proponents, if not indeed the creator, of the plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs during the last year of the Eisenhower administration. Is that true?

[Richard Nixon]

No. I was pretty busy at that time developing my campaign for 1960. There's no question that I supported the idea, along with Allen Dulles and others in the administration.

[Frank Gannon]

Were you aware of it from an early point?

[Richard Nixon]

I was aware of it from an early point, but as far as how it was to be done, how they were to be trained, how they were to be supported, I was not privy to that. I knew that we did have a program.

[Frank Gannon]

In your presidency, one of the most frustrating things was trying to get from the C.I.A. the report of--the C.I.A.'s internal report about the Bay of Pigs. Why did you want to have that?

[Richard Nixon]

Well, I felt it was very important--

Day four, Tape three of four, LINE FEED #3, 5-12-83, ETI Reel #29
May 12, 1983

Day 4, Tape 3
00:01:08
[Richard Nixon]

--to have that--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:01:09
[Action note: Picture appears.]

[Richard Nixon]

--from a political standpoint as well as from others as well, due to the fact that it seemed to me, as the campaign was developing, that that might become an issue. What--what I'm--what I'm referring to is that, as I saw the Bay of Pigs--the--the Bay of P--the--well--start again. I felt it was important, that with all the attacks we were going to be un-- be subjected to during the campaign, that we have a report as to what happened in the Bay of Pigs, and the other report that I wanted was on the bombing halt that was negotiated--ed by President Johnson and the terms of that bombing halt. I felt we had to have all the facts with regard to how those particular events were developed.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:02:10
[Frank Gannon]

I think we've come to the end of our hour. Little digression there.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:02:16
[Richard Nixon]

Yeah, I wondered.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:02:19
[Frank Gannon]

Well, we'll see.

[Action note: Sound cuts off.]

Day 4, Tape 3
00:02:22
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 3
00:02:25
[Frank Gannon]

--got the film of you with Castro, so we'll use that in the "leader" section.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:02:28
[Richard Nixon]

Yeah. And we want to cover the Bay of Pigs for the sixties se--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:02:33
[Action note: Color bars appear on screen.]

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:32
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:34
[Action note: Picture appears.]

[Richard Nixon]

But then, tomorrow, then we'll come around to--in view of all that, what--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:38
[Frank Gannon]

The alert, and the--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:39
[Richard Nixon]

Yeah.

[Frank Gannon]

--actu--the--the war itself.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:40
[Richard Nixon]

'Cause--but then you have '74 summit, where he poli--where he--he said that he didn't do it, didn't support the Israelis. He had tried to c--restrain them, and all that sort of thing. Do you want to get that in today, or not?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:53
[Frank Gannon]

(Sighs.)

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:55
[Offscreen voice]

Uh, Frank?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:56
[Richard Nixon]

Well, we'll see.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:57
[Frank Gannon]

Let's see.

[Richard Nixon]

See how it goes.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:03:59
[Offscreen voice]

Uh, Frank?

[Richard Nixon]

'Cause that was in the--

[Offscreen voice]

Have we started a new subject that would require a wide shot, or should we just come up to you on the tight shot [unintelligible]?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:04:07
[Frank Gannon]

Let's, uh--no, just a tight shot.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:04:09
[Offscreen voice]

Okay, we'll come up camera one. Stand by.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:04:15
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 3
00:04:17
[Richard Nixon]

All right, here we go. Two--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:04:21
[Offscreen voice]

Five--

[Richard Nixon]

Two-twelve.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:04:23
[Action note: Picture appears.]

[Offscreen voice]

Three--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:04:26
[Frank Gannon]

Thirteen years after your meeting with Khrushchev in the Kremlin, you were back as president of the United States for a meeting with Khrushchev's successor, Brezhnev. What were your impressions of Leonid Brezhnev as you walked into his office?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:04:42
[Richard Nixon]

Well, naturally, I was thinking, perhaps, of how he differed from Khrushchev, because it was exactly the same office and the same table there, bare, no particular paintings or anything on the wall, nothing distinctive at all about it. But the men were quite different. Uh--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:05:01
[Frank Gannon]

How did they differ?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:05:02
[Richard Nixon]

Well, first, let me say how they did not differ, because that's just as important. They were both dedicated Communists. They were both ruthless. They were both very tough. As I have often pointed out, in Communist countries, the weak never get to the top. Sometime you may elect, in--in a free country, a weak person, but in that jungle it's dog-eat-dog, and only the fittest survive at the top. And so it was with Brezhnev. He was a tough, ruthless leader, just as was Khrushchev before him. There were differences, however. As I talked to Brezhnev, I found that, while he was intelligent, he was not nearly as quick as Khrushchev. He was not nearly as unpredictable, although at times he could be pretty tricky as well. But he was a little more obvious about it than Khrushchev. He didn't have Khrushchev's scintillating sense of humor. He had a sense of humor, but Khrushchev could just move from one thing to another very fast. He dropped off proverbs practically every two or three minutes. He always had colorful phrases, which Brezhnev seldom had. I remember whenever Khrushchev in our talks would say this or that or the other thing wouldn't be agreed to by the Soviet Union and it wasn't going to happen, he said, "That isn't going to happen un--until a shrimp learns to whistle," or "until you can s--see your ears without a mirror." You didn't hear Brezhnev talking that way. He--his humor was a--a little more obvious. I would say one other thing about the--the Khrushchev-Brezhnev differences--that while Khrushchev would at times be somewhat even vulgar, Brezhnev was crude at times, but not to the point of Khrushchev, not in an embarrassing way. He was just earthy, like Lyndon Johnson. I never thought of Lyndon Johnson as being a vulgar man. He never was, but he was an earthy man. And Brezhnev was very much like Johnson in that respect, and like him in another respect--very physical. He was a grabber. He'd always grab you when he wanted to make a point, either by the knee or by the arm. Incidentally, speaking of Johnson's tendency to do that, I recall President Eisenhower having a go with Jerry Persons, who succeeded Sherman Adams as chief of staff. Persons told me about this later. And he said that Johnson--President Eisenhower had agreed to see the then-majority leader of the Senate, Johnson. Johnson was coming into the Oval Office, and Eisenhower wasn't feeling too well that day, and he said, "Well, I'll agree to see him, Jerry, but on one condition. You stand between him and me at the desk, because I don't want him to grab my arm. My bursitis is kicking up." And he would have had to say that with Brezhnev, because Brezhnev was a grabber as well. All in all, another point I should make is that I think Brezhnev was more cautious than Khrushchev. Khrushchev was more imaginative, more creative, as a matter of fact, in a way, a more interesting person, but in a way also, in the short term, more dangerous. Maybe not in the long term. Brezhnev probably was just as dangerous, because he was more cautious. But in the short term, Khrushchev could be counted upon to do something risky, something impulsive, like, for example, putting missiles into Cuba. I do not think that Brezhnev would have done that. That's the difference between the two and what they would do.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:08:40
[Frank Gannon]

What--do you have an example of the difference between earthiness and crudity?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:08:48
[Richard Nixon]

Well, as far as the--as Khrushchev's conversation was concerned, I have already indicated the confrontation we had when I first went into the office and we--we compared the different kinds of manure, horse and pig, for that matter. I--I would--I don't think you--you would have seen Brezhnev do that.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:09:15
[Frank Gannon]

The first night in Moscow they gave a very grand banquet for you in the Kremlin. Do you remember that night?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:09:24
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, very well. I had just met with Brezhnev in his office, and it had been a pretty testy go, although not nearly as testy as was the case with Khrushchev thirteen years earlier. Brezhnev was very respectable. And, incidentally, this brings me to another fundamental point between--the difference between not only the men but their times. Khrushchev had a definite inferiority complex, because his country was weaker. He knew that. By the time we met with Brezhnev, that inferiority was gone. He didn't have to constantly huff and puff and brag in a bellicose way, as Khrushchev had. And that made for a much better, more, I would say, forthcoming discussion than would have been otherwise, although they--it was pretty tough at times. Well, we went into this beautiful room. It's in the Kremlin, a--and we have to remember the Kremlin was the religious center of the czarist Russia as well as the political center. In fact, it was primarily the religious center. And I recall we were sitting at this beautiful table, Khrushchev obvi--Brezhnev obvious, uh--Brezhnev opposite me, and behind him was a magnificent mural, a fifteenth-century mural, of Christ and the apostles at the Last Supper, and Brezhnev noticed me looking at it, and he said, he said, "You know, that was the Politburo of those times." And I looked at it, and I said, "Well, y--that would seem to indicate that you, the general secretary, and the pope have a great deal in common." And he laughed. He usually responded to humor very well. Incidentally, I was almost t--tempted to ask him who was the Judas of the day, but I thought better of it and didn't.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:11:14
[Frank Gannon]

He might have responded by asking you how many battalions the pope had. [Unintelligible.]

Day 4, Tape 3
00:11:17
[Richard Nixon]

(Laughing.) That's right.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:11:19
[Frank Gannon]

The--this first summit produced two major agreements, the [Anti-Ballistic Missile Agreement] and the--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:11:30
[Richard Nixon]

Offensive.

[Frank Gannon]

--the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty, the S.A.L.T. treaty. You have said that a leader shouldn't go to a summit unless he knows exactly what's going to come out of it. How much did you know these agreements were going to come out of the summit, or--or how much negotiation actually was left to do face-to-face between you and Brezhnev?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:11:48
[Richard Nixon]

Well, first, I should point out that we had negotiated at a distance through our representatives long before that, and I knew what was going on every bit of the way. Henry Kissinger conducted those no--negotiations with great skill and great brilliance and great tenacity, and, of course, he had gone to the Soviet Union and met for four days with Brezhnev, nailing down some of the final agreements. So the negotiations had taken place, but not face-to-face. When we got face-to-face, we assumed, or I assumed, that all we would do would be pretty much to put our signatures on the final product, which had already been prepared. But there were a few loose ends left to work out. Well, for example, with regard to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Soviet Union had an A.B.M. system around Moscow, and we, of course, were just building one, or starting to build one as a result of winning, by only one vote in the Senate, an A.B.M. system for the United States that we were going to put around some of our Minutemen sites.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:12:50
[Frank Gannon]

What is an A.B.M. system?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:12:51
[Richard Nixon]

An A.B.M. I--means an [sic] anti-ballistic missiles that will shoot down incoming missiles, and they wanted to protect Moscow, which is their command center from which they order strikes from--around the whole world. In any event, the critical question there was how close or how far away the missiles should be--the A.B.M. system, sh--I should say--should be from Moscow. And it had been a point of contention, because we wanted it as far away from Moscow as possible. We wanted--but they wanted it closer in. And so, under the circumstances, then, as we were talking, Brezhnev said to me, "Well, I--it is our understanding that what we have agreed to is that these missiles be two"--these A.B.M., our A.B.M. system--"be twelve hundred kilometers from Moscow." And I knew that wasn't right. And I said, "Fifteen hundred." He said, "No. I thought it was twelve hundred." And I said, "Fifteen hundred." And he said, "All right, it's twelve hundred"--"All right, it's fifteen hundred." No, I'm sorry. Let's start again. He said, "It's our understanding that we are to put our A.B.M. system twelve hundred miles from Moscow," and I said, "No. That's not correct. What I understand we've agreed to is fifteen hundred miles." "But why fifteen hundred miles? Do you want us to put it in the Urals?" And I said, "No. It's my understanding--fifteen hundred miles." And then he just dropped it like that. Okay, fifteen hundred is all right. And I remember Henry Kissinger passed me a little note. He said this whole summit was worth that one interchange. In any event, Brezhnev was trying, of course, to slip a fast one by us, but thanks to Kissinger's good preparation and my being well--b--being briefed fairly well on it, we were able to say no. We hardlined it, and he took the fifteen hundred.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:14:39
[Frank Gannon]

There was another--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:14:40
[Richard Nixon]

And then there was another interplay, incidentally, with regard to the offensive weapons. You understand, the A.B.M. Treaty, the defensive weapons, was one part of it. That became a treaty, and that was permanent. And, on the other hand, the offensive limitation was a temporary one. It was to be for five years. That was what I had understood would be the agreement that the Russians had worked out with Kissinger at the second level. And when--when I--when we--when we came to that discussion, Brezhnev, all of a sudden, said, "Why don't we make it ten years?" And Kissinger immediately stepped into the conversation. He said, "Look," he said, "we only agreed to five years. We both did, because you only wanted eighteen months, and now we have five years." The reason, incidentally, we didn't want to go to ten years was that we couldn't be in a position of--of b--in effect, freezing ourselves into any position that would be inferior to the Russians. In five years, we had to determine whether we were going to get control on their offensive weapons, which were moving up much faster than ours.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:15:57
[Frank Gannon]

Aren't we inferior to them now?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:15:59
[Richard Nixon]

In land-based missiles, yes. Not overall. Overall, we're ahead on the sea, we're ahead in the air, but the land-based are the most--are the heaviest, they're the most accurate, they're the most decisive. They're--they're frankly the--the key to any nuclear strategy.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:16:20
[Frank Gannon]

Why did they--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:16:21
[Richard Nixon]

They're the only ones that have a first-strike capability.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:16:24
[Frank Gannon]

Why did they adopt this kind of negotiating tactics, because, if something had been agreed on beforehand, and in a--in a negotiation the difference between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred were--were transposed, couldn't you come back and say, even if you had agreed to something unexpectedly--couldn't you come back and say that, in all the negotiations beforehand, that this was simply a mis--a misspeaking? Or does the president have the power to actually make an irreversible commitment in a negotiation like that one-on-one?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:16:57
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, certainly, the president has the power, without any question.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:17:00
[Frank Gannon]

Could you not come back--

[Richard Nixon]

And so--

[Frank Gannon]

--and say--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:17:01
[Richard Nixon]

And so--and so did he have the power. I think the reason they did that was that they were simply testing me. They were trying to see how much--how badly I wanted a deal. They had probably tried it out on K--on Kissinger earlier, and he said, "Well, no, I can't, because I cannot without consulting the president." He was always very good at s--doing that, and so they had--they made a run at me, basically, and appealed to the highest court, and when they found that I took exactly the same line, they backed down. They probe everyplace they can, and, as Lenin used to say--he said, "Probe with bayonets." He said, "If you find mush, proceed. If you find steel, withdraw." And in this case, they found steel, so they withdrew.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:17:47
[Frank Gannon]

Another trip to a dacha was planned as part of the summit activities. Was it the same one that Khrushchev had taken you to?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:17:55
[Richard Nixon]

Exactly the same one--the same river, everything. We went at a different time of day, however. I--we had just finished a very long day of negotiations, and we were scheduled to go out there a little later that night for dinner. And as we finished our discussions, Brezhnev grabbed me by the arm as we went into the elevator, and he says, "Look," he says, "I want you to see the Moscow countryside in the daytime," because he n--knew, of course, that we had gone out the previous time to spend the night. And so we got into his limousine. The Secret Service were practically petrified, because they weren't with us, and we took off at about a one-hundred-kilometer-a-mile clip down the middle of the Moscow roads, with all of the people, of course--b--the other people in the private cars off to the side. And we went out to the dacha. When we got there, I--he showed me around, as I, of course, recalled exactly how it looked before. And it was very interesting. And they had me stay, incidentally, in the same bedroom. It's an--it's an interesting thing. The Chinese and the Russians are very different, but they tend to go with the same ploy with regard to physical arrangements. For example, in 1972 I stayed in a fine guest house in Peking. When I came back in 1976--they had me in exactly the same guest house when Mrs. Nixon and I came back. In this case, we went there in 1972, and we had exactly the same dacha that we had had th--thirteen years before, and the same was true, incidentally, with regard to our Kremlin suite, the magnificent Kremlin suite which Brezhnev had shown me as we came in 1972, the one that was made available to us then--exactly the same one right down to the caviar and the cucumbers on the dining room table that we had in 1972. It was there in 1974.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:19:59
[Frank Gannon]

Were the hidden microphones the same?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:20:02
[Richard Nixon]

Well, as far as the microphones are concerned, we always assumed that they were there, and, incidentally, we assumed that they were in China. I had a practice in that time, in '72, '73, '74, of dictating into my Sony dictator my recollections at the end of a day. In order to do that, I turned on what we call a scrambler, and it makes a lot of noise and so forth which scrambles it so that the microphones, which are usually, we assume, up in the ceiling, or perhaps in the phone or something like that, couldn't pick it up. Consequently, when my secretary, years later, had to transcribe some of that, it was a little difficult to hear it because of the scrambler. If you have any doubt about it, however, one of the White House secretaries who was on that trip told me of a very amusing incident thereafter. She just happened to casually, as she went in one day for lunch and saw all the cucumbers and the other fine things that they served around there, said, "You know, gee, I'd--really wish I could get an apple." And about ten minutes later, in walked a maid very innociously [sic] and put a whole basket of apples right on the table for her.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:21:12
[Frank Gannon]

Wasn't there--wasn't there a story about Kissinger wanting to get Xeroxed copies of something?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:21:17
[Richard Nixon]

Yes. Well, this was Kissinger's meeting with Gromyko, and he told me about this later with great glee, because Henry has a very good sense of humor. He's a very serious negotiator, but he's got a sharp sense of humor, and he uses it effectively. And he said he and Gromyko were talking, and Gromyko, when he saw this piece of paper that they were discussing that Henry had brought along, he said he'd like to have copies. And so Henry took the piece of paper and held it up to the chandelier and said, "Six copies, please."

Day 4, Tape 3
00:21:48
[Frank Gannon]

At this first Moscow summit as president, just as Khrushchev had taken you out on the Moscow River for a dr--a boat ride, didn't Brezhnev do the same thing?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:22:00
[Richard Nixon]

Yes. In this case, he--he took me, however, in a hydrofoil. That was the new kind of boat that they had, and--and he was very, very proud of it. He--he--he kept pointing to the thermometer--sorry. He kept--he was very proud of it. He kept pointing to the speedometer, which would show us going at around sixty to seventy-five kilometers an hour, which would mean about forty--forty knots, which was real fast. You know, it gets up above the water and just sails right along. I was glad there were no sunken logs rising to the surface at that point. And, uh--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:22:31
[Frank Gannon]

Were there any swimmers that time?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:22:33
[Richard Nixon]

This time, no ploy like that, because there had been no discussion of captive peoples. Oh, we had one little in--interesting interchange. I recall I asked him about the Moscow River, because I had remembered the swimmers from before, and I said did he ever swim there. He says, "Oh, no!" He says, "I prefer to swim down on the Black Sea. The water is much warmer. Here's i--it's much colder. They get you right here," and he pointed to his groun--groin. [Both laugh.] He pointed to his groin.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:23:04
[Frank Gannon]

At the--in your meetings with Khrushchev at the dacha, he gave you that--that eerie nuclear workover over luncheon. Were you treated any better by Brezhnev and his comrades in 1972?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:23:21
[Richard Nixon]

Only in the sense that we were treated very, very toughly, but privately. You see, the--the Khrushchev treatment was rather interesting because the wives were there--Mrs. Nixon and Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Brezhnev and so forth and so on. And they sat there as spectators, eyes agog and so forth and so on, as anybody would. In this case, however, we were going up to dinner. The dinner was--was to be held later, and this--we--we were preparing to go up to dinner, and what happened was that, before dinner, Brezhnev suggested that we should have a little talk. So we went into a room, and here I was confronted, on the other side of the table, with Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Podgorny, Podgorny being the president of the Soviet Union, at least insofar as his title was concerned. And Kissinger, of course, was on our side, and one of his associates. And then for three-and-a-half hours they just pummeled me on Vietnam. One would talk, and then another would talk, and another would take up the cudgels, and when either Brezhnev or Podgorny was--had the floor, Brezhnev--no, sorry. When either--when either--let me start again. One would talk, and then the other, and so forth. I'll take that sequence again. They just pummeled me with arguments. First one would talk, and then another would talk, and then another one, and sometimes all of them talked at once. It just reminded me of the scrambler back in the--we had back in the hotel room, or, I should say, in the room at the Kremlin, our apartment there. And--and on occasion, when Podgorny had the floor or when Kosygin had the floor, Brezhnev would get up and pace the floor. That was something he usually--he did quite often. He'd get up and pace the floor, like Douglas MacArthur used to pace the floor on occasion when he got very, you know, involved in a subject. As a matter of fact, Brezhnev used to tell Kissinger on occasion, he said, "Every time I get up--stand up, I make another concession." That was a slight overstatement, incidentally, but he made good use of it. But the whole thrust of it was to take me on there on the issue of Vietnam. See, you have to lay the groundwork there. We went to Moscow three weeks after bombing and mining the Hanoi-Haiphong complex, and we thought, when that decision was made, that there was a very good chance that we would never go at all. In fact, right after the decision was made, Henry said there was only a ten percent chance that they would not call off the summit. The next day he raised it to twenty, and the following day to thirty, and then we were all, frankly, relieved and somewhat surprised that they finally raised no objection at all, and we went. But, in any event, here they were getting in their licks on Vietnam. And one point that was made during the course of the conversation, I remember--it was Podgorny, who is the nominal president of the Soviet Union--was saying, "We--we don’t understand, and international opinion does not understand how you could possibly support an unelected leader of South Vietnam." And I said, "Who elected the leader of North Vietnam?" He said, "All the people." I says, "Go ahead." But the point was made. And then, on another occasion, when Kosygin had taken it up--he's a little bit more subtle than either Brezhnev than [sic] Podgorny, certainly the most intelligent overall of the three--but he made the point, he said, "In the event that the United States continues to handle the Vietnam issue from a position of so-called strength," he said, "you must be aware of the fact that the time may come when the North Vietnamese will no longer refuse to ask some of their allies and friends to assist them." Well, I knew that had gone too far, and I said, "That threat doesn't frighten me a bit, but go ahead and make it." And then he backed down. He said, "Well, I didn't intend it as a threat. I was simply stating what the facts might be." Well, after this had gone on for about an hour, and I was just listening and not reacting, I decided we ought to break the momentum just a little bit, and they were all smoking--I think they were all smoking, at least, and they used to always offer their cigarettes to me, and this time I had come prepared. I had a--a package of something called cigarillos--I don’t happen to smoke cigarettes--cigarillos with me. I don't smoke them either, but I pulled them out--they looked like cigarettes, cigar tobacco--and offered them around. Well, that stopped the conversation, because they didn't want them. They liked their own cigarettes, and so they thanked me profusely and didn't take them, but at least it broke the momentum of the conversation. But then they took it up again.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:28:27
[Frank Gannon]

What--was there any result?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:28:29
[Richard Nixon]

Well, the result was that I finally answered, and that ended the meeting. And the answer was very tough. I said, "Now, look. You've talked about the fact that the United States is responsible for deaths in Vietnam and that sort of thing. You've talked about your standing by your allies. Let me say, we're going to stand by ours, but let's understand one thing." I said, "A great American general, General Sherman, once said that war is hell." And I said, "Nobody knows better than you, the people of the Soviet Union, that war is hell after what you went through in World War I and World War II. But let me tell you the hell that you have been responsible for in South Vietnam. Twenty thousand civilians have already been killed since that offensive was launched on May the eighth--twenty thousand civilians killed primarily by guns and tanks furnished by the Soviet Union." I said, "Now we're not going to tolerate that. Let's understand that right at the beginning." Then we went up to have dinner. That stopped the conversation.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:29:32
[Frank Gannon]

Well, the dinner must have been uncomfortable.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:29:34
[Richard Nixon]

On the contrary. It's just like Khrushchev--they were like--he was like Khrushchev in this way. They--they move from a period of confrontation and negotiation to one of belligerence to total Russian hospitality. They--they had the very finest, as you can imagine, caviar and all the other fine Russian dishes, wines, and so forth. We joked a little about Kissinger being there. Kissinger, incidentally, is--is--does not drink. Well, he just barely tastes it. Like any good diplomat, he knows that isn't very smart. And so I made my usual joke. "Well, let's be sure that we give Henry plenty of vodka so that--and Gromyko plenty as well, so that they can work out the negotiations," and they'd all laugh at that. Uh--the--uh--go ahead.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:30:31
[Frank Gannon]

Is that where--is that where you had the discussion about the relative merits--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:30:34
[Richard Nixon]

Uh-huh.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:30:35
[Frank Gannon]

--of different kinds of dictation techniques?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:30:40
[Richard Nixon]

Well, there was a lot of conversation at the dinner. Just to give you an idea of the--the temper and so forth and so on, I--on--on rather personal habits and so forth--and I asked Brezhnev about whether he used the Dictaphone. Now, as a matter of fact, the reason I asked him was that I was hoping I might be able to give him one a--as--as a minor state gift. We had already agreed to give him another luxury car for his collection of luxury automobiles. He says, "Oh, no, no, no." He says, "I--I never want to use a Dictaphone machine." He said--he said, "I don't like to dictate into an impersonal machine," and then, with a little sort of a wink, he said, "I'd much rather dictate to a pretty girl." And he said, "You know, when you wake up in the middle of the night and want to make a note, it's always very useful to have somebody there in the room to give it to."

Day 4, Tape 3
00:31:40
[Frank Gannon]

What do you think they expected to accomplish from this triple-teaming of you on the subject of Vietnam? Do--they must have known that you were not going to cave under that kind of pressure. What do you think they wanted to say or achieve?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:31:55
[Richard Nixon]

Well, first, they were making a record. They were making a record for themselves and among themselves, each proving that he was tough. They were making a record, and this would, of course, they knew, get back to their hierarchy, for their hierarchy that they were standing by their ally. They were making a record also for the North Vietnamese. I think that was the main purpose. I do not think that they had any illusions that they were going to change me, because they--after what I had done, ordering three weeks before the summit, knowing it would risk the summit, the bombing and mining of Haiphong, I think they were totally aware that no matter--no rhetoric, warm or soft, was going to change me.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:32:40
[Frank Gannon]

What do you think they thought of you?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:32:43
[Richard Nixon]

I think they--whether they like or disliked is irrelevant. That's, again, one of the problems we have in dealing with the Soviets. We are so obsessed, we Americans, with the idea, "Does he like me? Am I handling myself in a way that will give him a warmer feeling toward me?" And all that is--is nonsense in dealing with these people. These people are total materialists. It isn't whether they like you or not. It's whether they respect you. And I don't mean by that you go out and spit in their eye and swear at them and embarrass them and the rest, but in the final analysis, their decisions will be made coldly and objectively depending upon whether they respect their adversaries. They'll push you as far as they can, but no further. And I think they felt that I couldn't be pushed around, but also I think they respected the fact that, after our long negotiations leading up to the first summit, negotiations on Berlin, which were successful, negotiations where we got them to take their missiles, or their missile submarine base, out of Cuba and Cienfuegos, negotiations that kept them out of intervening in the war g--between Syria and Jordan on the side of Syria in 1970, and negotiations which got them to participate with us in bringing a ceasefire between India and Pakistan--I think, in view of that background, they thought, "Well, he is strong and tough, but reasonable." And so, having recognized that they weren't going to get something for nothing, they recognized that they had to give something in order to get something, and that was the basis for what I think were very successful negotiations, right for us and right for them as properly implemented.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:34:35
[Frank Gannon]

H. R. Haldeman has written about talking to you about what you both called the ["Madman Theory,"] which you applied vis-à-vis the North Vietnamese particularly--that you as a--an inveterate anti-Communist couldn't be depended upon not to do something extreme if provoked and therefore that was supposed to get them to--to give concessions at the negotiations. Was that applied vis-à-vis the Soviets? Did they think that with your finger on the button you just might do something?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:35:05
[Richard Nixon]

Well, apa--apart from what Bob Haldeman has said, certainly that was Henry Kissinger's view. Kissinger felt that it was very important, not, of course, to think like a madman, but on occasion to leave the impression to a potential adversary that you might engage in very tough action and always to give that impression, and, above all, never to indicate--and Eisenhower used to say this--don't ever indicate to your potential adversary what you won't do. Don't say, "Look. I'm not going to put in forces. I'm not going to do this. You can count on me to do this and that and the other thing." Leave them always a little uncertain that, if they push you too far, you're willing to take great risks. And my May eighth decision, my bombing in December--the bombing in December of--after the elections of 1972--while those were very difficult decisions politically. they were effective in bringing the war to Vietnam to an end, but also they were effective in establishing credibility with the Russians and any other nation that might want to test us in the international area.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:36:26
[Frank Gannon]

Did you make any special arrangements for the dinner you gave for Brezhnev at the American embassy?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:36:32
[Richard Nixon]

Not particularly special. I didn't think it was particularly special, because, you know, we had a--a usual dinner--oh, we flew in beef from Kansas City, as I recall, and we had some California wines and that sort of thing, the usual thing, just as we had in China. We were making very sure we did exactly the same things we did for the Russians that we'd done for the Chinese. But when the dessert came around, it was one of my favorites--it was [baked Alaska]. And Brezhnev brightened up, and he says, "Oh, the Americans are really miracle workers. They’ve learned how to set ice cream on fire." Now, I just wondered if, probably, they don't make [baked Alaska], too, because they use a lot of flaming dishes. But it was a nice compliment, in any event, and our chef, [Delacruz], was just overwhelmed by it.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:37:21
[Frank Gannon]

From Moscow, you went on to Kiev. What--what were your impressions of--of Kiev like?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:37:28
[Richard Nixon]

Well, Kiev, of course, is in the Ukraine, and the Ukrainians have always had a history of not--not being pro-Russian. As a matter of fact, when the German armies moved into the Ukraine in--shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, the Ukrainians welked--welcomed them with flowers and open arms and so forth, and only because of the repression, which was very stupid--the viciousness, in many cases, of the Nazi soldiers, did they turn against the Germans, because they wanted to be liberated from the Russians--the Communists, particularly. But in the Ukraine--I must say, Kiev was very different from Moscow. In Moscow, as we drove through the streets--there were crowds, but they were kept three blocks away, and it w--a--and the crowds were very unresponsive. They--they seemed to be fearful to come close at all. But every time you get away from r--the center of the Soviet Union--the political center, Moscow--i--it's a lot more free, to use that term in the broadest sense, in Leningrad, in Siberia, and certainly in the Ukraine. I remember there--I remember on one of the streets we went through there were balconied apartments, and people w--women and children and so forth were leaning on the balconies, waving their handkerchiefs and scarves and that sort of thing. There was really an emotional welcome.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:38:55
[Frank Gannon]

Wasn't there a point when you wondered whether you were ever going to get out of Moscow?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:38:59
[Richard Nixon]

Well, that's a--that, of course, was--perhaps the most memorable part of the visit to the Ukraine was just getting there. We went out to the airport. Brezhnev did not go on that trip, because he was the general secretary, but only the political leaders were going. So Kosygin and Podgorny, the president, were accompanying me. And we got into the plane, and we were waiting for the takeoff, and there was a little bit of a wait, and Kissinger and Haldeman and I were sitting going over schedules, and, all of a sudden, back into our compartment walked Kosygin, with Brezhnev, with the most woebegone-looking Soviet general, beribboned and so forth, I've ever seen. He was the ch--ch--chief of Soviet civil aviation, as I learned later. And Kosygin said to me, or Podgorny said to me, he says, "I'm sorry, Mr. President, but we've got some engine trouble," and this--they introduced the general to me, and they said, "What do you want us to do to him?" And I said, "Promote him." And they said, "What?" And I said, "Promote him." I said, "Promote him for finding the trouble on the ground rather than waiting until we got into the air." Incidentally, we'd had a similar situation, now that you mention it, with Khrushchev. When we went on that Moscow boat trip that we saw a film of here earlier, we were going down the river, and the pilot of the boat ran into a sandbar. And Khrushchev was furious. He gave that poor devil a look that I know must have practically frozen him. And he--he's probably out digging salt in Siberia, if he's even living today. But, in any event, I tried to play it down by pointing up something that had happened to me just a month before. I said, "Well, Mr. Chairman, don't be concerned about that." I said, "This can happen." I said, "I have a very good friend"--that happened to be s--Bebe Rebozo--"who's a very good boatman, and he ran into a sandbar down in the Keys of Florida just recently. So it can happen to anybody." Khrushchev didn't smile one bit. He just made a snarly look at this other fellow. But, in any event, we saved the life of the general, and probably his promotion on that plane.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:15
[Frank Gannon]

What--what was Kosygin like?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:18
[Richard Nixon]

Kosygin--very intellectual. He--he--he was not crude at all. Highly sophisticated, one who also understood business very well. He was the businessman of the group. He understood economics extremely well. I think Macmillan once told me that Kosygin was one who could be the chairman of a--of a--of a major--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:50
[Frank Gannon]

I.C.I.?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:51
[Richard Nixon]

Uh--what's that?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:52
[Frank Gannon]

I think he s--didn't he say I.C.I.?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:54
[Richard Nixon]

Yes.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:55
[Frank Gannon]

Imper--Chemical Industries.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:56
[Richard Nixon]

Yeah.

[Offscreen voice]

[Unintelligible.] Pick up--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:57
[Frank Gannon]

Yeah.

[Offscreen voice]

Pick up there. [Unintelligible.]

Day 4, Tape 3
00:41:59
[Richard Nixon]

I--I think--I think--I think it was Macmillan who once told me that--he said Kosygin could be the chairman of one of their big chemical industry complexes or something of that sort. He is a--he was a very cold fish in that respect. And also I sensed that he, deep down, was at times, even more Russian than Communist, although a dedicated Communist. I remember I sat with him--between him and Podgorny, as a matter of fact--when they took us to the Bolshoi, and we saw Swan Lake, and I was remarking to him what a beautiful building the Bol--Bolshoi was. And I found that this is one thing, incidentally, we totally agreed on. He compared it to the [Canadian] center where he had seen some ballet when he had visited Canada, a great modern building--modern like the Kennedy senator [he may mean "Kennedy Center"] and also like the--uh--uh--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:42:52
[Nixon and Gannon in unison]

--Lincoln Center--

[Richard Nixon]

--here in New York. And he said he much preferred the Bolshoi to it, and he also remarked that, as far as the--the--Swan Lake was concerned, which he had seen many times, and I had as well, that the section he liked the best was the Dance of the Four Swans in the second act. But this little byplay doesn't tell us any more than that he liked ballet, as I did, and Tchaikovsky, as I did, but also that he didn't like modern architecture and I didn't, either. So we had some agreement.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:43:26
[Frank Gannon]

Didn't he tell you there a story about his meeting with Castro?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:43:30
[Richard Nixon]

No, the meeting with Castro--he didn't tell that. He did tell that story, but not there. That occurred, as a matter of fact, on the flight to Kiev, on the airplane. It was a fascinating story, I thought. He had seen Castro in 1967--no, wait a minute--yes. he had seen Castro, he said, in 1967, so it must have been then, and he--they had gone swimming in Havana in--at the great [Varadero] beach, which is a long, long, great beach, one of the great beaches of the world, where you have to go out a long, long way before the water gets over your head. And he said he and Castro walked out through the waves--waded out until finally they were able to float and the water was over their heads. And Castro remarked to him, he says, "Well," he says, "we are now in international waters." And Kosygin replied, "That's okay." He said, "I know Johnson, and he's not going to do anything against me."

Day 4, Tape 3
00:44:43
[Frank Gannon]

At the summit in 1972, did Brezhnev say anything about the Chinese? And did he bring up your--did he refer to your trip to China, which had been just three or four months earlier?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:44:53
[Richard Nixon]

Minimally. Not particularly surprisingly, however. He--it was in 1973 when he hit the hardest on the China initiative, but that's another story that we may get to when we get to that particular summit. But in 1972 he said very little. For example, he did mention it in that very testy meeting that we had at the dacha, when he said that--he made the point that what we were trying to do in terms of our offensive, in--in terms of our supporting the Vietnamese, was to--of course, to embarrass them on their China policy--embarrass--I mean, embarrass--well, forget that.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:45:42
[Frank Gannon]

Did--do you think--although Brezhnev didn't mention China, do you think it was ever not on his mind for a minute?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:45:48
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, absolutely. The reason he didn't mention it was it was on his mind very much, but he wasn't about to show any concern about it, having in mind the fact that we had just been to China in February. The--the only one passing comment, which was a theme that Khrushchev had used thirteen years before, and which Brezhnev used again in '73 and again in '74, was a comment to the effect, just in passing, that "we Europeans," as he put it, referring to us as Europeans as well, and the Russians Europeans--we Europeans are very different than the Chinese, the Asiatics.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:46:28
[Frank Gannon]

Did he make any references to the upcoming presidential elections or to Senator McGovern?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:46:35
[Richard Nixon]

No, not with regard to McGovern, but he made several references with regard to his hope that I would be reelected. He toasted my reelection. There was no question, first, that he believed I was going to be reelected. They follow the American polls closer than we do, and through Ambassador Dobrynin, who is perhaps the ablest ambassador who's been in Washington for the last twenty-five years, they get a very good run-down on what's happening in American politics. Let me say again--I don't mean that when he toasted me as the next president and--and he hoped that I would be reelected and all that sort of thing--I don't mean that he was doing it out of any sentiment. He didn't do that because he liked me. He was saying that because he thought objectively that I was probably going to win and that he was going to have to deal with me, and, consequently, recognizing what he could do nothing about, he was going to make the best of it.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:47:34
[Frank Gannon]

In their--in his heart of hearts, do you think he would have preferred McGovern, or is there any truth to the--or validity to the theory that they--that the Soviets prefer a dependable, conservative anti-Communist president to--President Carter presumably being the case in point--to a more sympathetic but erratic and undependable liberal?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:47:57
[Richard Nixon]

That's a very close question. I know of both of those theories. I think that at that time, in the year 1972, that Brezhnev did want a dependable president, one who could deliver on whatever deals were made, one that could carry the country with him. I think, on the other hand, there are times when the Soviet would welcome having a president who was naïve, or at least they consider to be naïve, one that they could take liberties with and so forth. The difficulty with the latter, however, is that they know that the American political scene is a volatile one, it's a fast-changing one, and they know that the country may be dovish today and become very hawkish tomorrow. So, I think--I think that, generally speaking, the pragmatic men in the Kremlin prefer leaders in the United States who are strong--not belligerent, but strong--pragmatic, as they are, and also ones that can carry the country with them. At least that's my observation, but it could be wrong.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:49:16
[Frank Gannon]

What do you feel was the principal accomplishment of the first summit in 1972?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:49:22
[Richard Nixon]

Well, the major accomplishment, of course, was the arms control agreement that we reached on defensive weapons and limiting--the five-year limitation on offensive weapons. Another accomplishment, too, and it's hard to know how much of a role this played in bringing the war to Vietnam to an end, but at least it helped, was in the last meeting I had with Brezhnev--his agreement to send a major Soviet leader to North Vietnam. I think what happened there was not that the Soviet Union pressed North Vietnam to make a deal. But what happened was that, as a result of our visits to both China in 1972, early, and to Moscow, later in 1972, the North Vietnamese realized that their major supporters had other fish to fry with the United States, and, consequently, they realized they didn't have as strong a support as they'd had previously, and that helped bring about the peace agreement in 1973--January.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:50:27
[Frank Gannon]

The second S--U.S.-Soviet summit was held in the United States. How did--how did Brezhnev take to his first introduction to American life?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:50:39
[Richard Nixon]

Well, he is a natural politician. He handled himself much better than Khrushchev. Khrushchev came over very defensive, with that inferiority complex, although Khrushchev would have been a good American politician, too--perhaps at a different time. On the other hand, Brezhnev was very confident, very self-confident. He loved walking down the lines of people that we had out there at the--on the South Lawn, shaking hands and all that sort of thing. And he--he particularly liked Camp David. I remember that we gave him one of the Camp David jackets just as a memento, and he consisted [sic] on ra--wearing it all the time he was there. And after we'd gone to San Clemente, he wanted to come back to Camp David for a day or two because he liked it so much, before going back to Moscow. You see, Khrushchev, when he came over, tried to go public. He went to, for example, California, and was embarrassed by Mayor Yorty, and then he went to San Francisco and the rest. Brezhnev wasn't about to make that mistake. That's one of the reasons, I think, he insisted on staying with me in San Clemente and in Camp David. He never got himself in a position where he could be embarrassed.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:51:58
[Frank Gannon]

Was it true that he wanted to go to Detroit and to Houston, but because of f--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:52:02
[Offscreen voice]

Excuse me one second, Frank. Sorry.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:52:04
[Frank Gannon]

Sorry.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:52:22
[Frank Gannon]

Is it true that Brezhnev wanted to go to Detroit and to Houston, but, because of the fear of demonstrations against him, th--those visits had to be scrubbed?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:52:30
[Richard Nixon]

There was some talk of that sort, but I didn't want any untoward incidents to c--to occur, either. So, under the circumstances, I did not press the invitations that he had received in that respect. I think it was best to do exactly what he did. He went away with a very good impression of the U.S., and, like Khrushchev, he was enormously impressed by what he saw on the freeways of California, which I enabled him to see, in part, by having him ride on the other side of the helicopter rather than on the place of honor.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:53:02
[Frank Gannon]

Wasn't--your position in Summit II was considerably different from in the first s--s--from what it was in the first summit. Politically, you hadn't been able to deliver because of congressional opposition on the Jewish emigration issue, on most-favored-nation treaty status, on some trade agreements, and Watergate at that time was about to--to burst. The Dean testimony was--indeed, the John Dean testimony was delayed for a week for the--for the summit. How much were you inhibited or constrained in your negotiations because of these political factors?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:53:38
[Richard Nixon]

Those factors did not have any significant effect on those negotiations. Summit II was too early to have any further agreements on arms control. What we did get out of Summit II was an agreement to attempt to reach a settlement by 1974 on offensive weapons, and we had a--a--a general agreement with regard to the prevention of nuclear war, with the set of principles and so forth, which I think had considerable public support. But otherwise I do not think that there was any significant problem there. It was at Summit II--the main recollection I have of that from a substantive standpoint was the fact that Brezhnev made no bones about his concern on the Chinese issue.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:54:32
[Frank Gannon]

In what circumstances?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:54:34
[Richard Nixon]

Well, we were meeting at that time in San Clemente, in my office alone, just the two of us, not with a lot of other people around, a significant point to make. I do not think he would have made that point with his other Soviet colleagues even around him. Only his translator was there, Viktor, who, of course, was totally his man. And he--he said that he was convinced that the Chinese were a mortal danger insofar as war was concerned. He pointed out what others had pointed out in the Soviet leadership from time to time--that Mao had once said that they didn't fear war because you could kill three hundred thou--three hundred million Chinese and still have four hundred million left. And he made that point. I then said, "Well, how can you really be concerned? I've been to China." I said, "Economically, they're very weak, and they're very backward, therefore, industrially, and in terms of their nuclear power." I said, "It's going to take a long time for them to have the power that you have that would be at all threatening." I said, "How long do you think it's going to take?" And he held up his hands like that. And I thought, "Well, he--what's he doing, surrendering, or what?" I said--I said, "How long?" He said--he says, "Ten years. In ten years"--he was saying this in 1983--"they will be equal to us, or almost equal--enough to be a real threat." Well, of course, that's not proved to be true, but it did show what he thought at that time. And so he was urging wherever possible that we have a common front to control the Chinese danger and particularly the Chinese nuclear development at this point. Of course, I didn't give an inch on that--give an inch on that particular item.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:56:14
[Frank Gannon]

Was Brezhnev wearing his Camp David jacket when you gave him his car?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:56:19
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, yes. Yes. We--that was a pretty sporting event. We gave him, this time, a Lincoln. We'd given him a Cadillac, I think--yes, it was a Cadillac in Moscow, and I think we gave him a Chrysler the next time around. So he had one--one each of the Big Three.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:56:32
[Frank Gannon]

Were--you were telling him something?

Day 4, Tape 3
00:56:34
[Richard Nixon]

(Laughs.) Er, no. So we gave him the--the--this Lincoln he wanted to try. And so I got into the seat with him, and the Secret Service were petrified again, at any--because they don't let a president drive the car or anybody else drive except one of them. But, in any event, we went around a one-lane road which goes around the perimeter of Camp David, and it's a very steep drive, and I've gone down it in a golf cart. And it--it can be very dicey if the brakes on the golf cart are not particularly up to s--speed. But in this case, he went down that hill about fifty miles an hour, and I was just thinking, "My God, if one of the Marines comes aro--up that--up that road the other way, we're going to hit him." But fortunately we didn't. He--this--he turned as we went around the corner at the bottom, because it makes a hairpin turn to go back up the hill. The car turned, squeaked around there, and the tires screaming, and then we went up the hill and then finally came to a stop back up, and he's--he's--turned to me, and he smiled, and he says, "This car holds the road very well." And I was just thinking--it takes something sometimes to be a diplomat.

Day 4, Tape 3
00:57:48
[Frank Gannon]

What--do you have any recollections--

Day 4, Tape 3
00:57:51
[Action note: Screen goes black; no sound.]

The following text appears in the original transcript but does not appear on a tape. IT has not been edited.

[Frank Gannon]

--of the flight on Air Force One, his impressions of Air Force One--out to San Clemente?

[Richard Nixon]

Well, he loved it. He loved talking to some of the Americans I had aboard--particularly to John Connally. He and Connally hit it off well. They're both strong, macho-type men, one a Texan, one a Russian, and so they had a good talk. And he was particularly impressed when I took him to the window to look at the Grand Canyon. I said, "You've probably seen this in movies." He says, "Oh, yes, yes, I've seen it many times in Russian movies." Then I said, "John Wayne," and he jumped up out of his seat with a pair of six-shooters--boom-boom-boom-boom-boom.

[Frank Gannon]

When you went from--you landed in California, you--at El Toro Marine Base, you got onto Marine One, the president's helicopter, and went down to San Clemente. You mentioned that you sat him by the window so that he could look out instead of sitting in the place of honor where he couldn't see. What did you want to accomplish by that?

Day four, Tape three of four, LINE FEED #4, 5-12-83, ETI Reel #30
May 12, 1983

Day 4, Tape 4
00:01:34
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 4
00:01:39
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I wanted him to see the development in this country. I wanted him to see the possibilities that were open to him in the field of economic cooperation. I didn't need--I didn't think he needed to see, if Khrushchev needed to see, that the United States was not a paper tiger--tiger. He knew that. But I wanted him to see the possibilities of us moving together, even though we disagreed totally in philosophy and in the ne--economic area. Unfortunately, due to congressional reaction and so forth, we weren't able to make much progress, that year, at least, and--nor the next, for that matter.

Day 4, Tape 4
0:02:15
[Frank Gannon]

Why do you think he felt so strongly about staying with you personally at La Casa Pacifica?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:02:21
[Richard Nixon]

He wanted to avoid an incident. He knew what had happened to Khrushchev.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:02:25
[Frank Gannon]

Where did he stay?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:02:26
[Richard Nixon]

Well, he stayed in Tricia's bedroom. It was--its's--it's not a very big room, as a matter of fact, but a very beautifully decorated--in feminine colors and so forth, and this big bear of a man in that girl's dressing room was really something to see.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:02:46
[Frank Gannon]

You gave a poolside party for him that you have since described as being sort of a Hollywood [Who's Who]. Do you think he understood the difference between the guest list there and the guest list at the White House?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:02:59
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, yes. The guest list at the White House was primarily business types and political types and the rest, and he was very impressed by them as well. But at the poolside party--it was a celebrity party, and after all, he loved the Western movies and the Westerns and so forth and so on, and he liked meeting those movie stars. He liked meeting Governor Reagan, for example--I think more because Reagan had been a movie star, although they seemed to have a very good, pleasant conversation when they met there.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:03:27
[Frank Gannon]

Actually, we have some film of that party, which I think shows Brezhnev talking to the Reagans.

[Action note: They watch clip.]

Day 4, Tape 4
00:03:44
[Frank Gannon]

Do you remember what they talked about? Or what you--do you remember what you said to him there in introducing them?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:03:59
[Richard Nixon]

There are the Sinatras, I see--Frank Sinatra, and Barbara, his wife. No, I don't really remember. But he--as you may recall, President Reagan mentioned that, in a letter that he wrote to Brezhnev--what he talked to him about--in which he said that Brezhnev had spoken very warmly about his desire to have peace, et cetera.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:04:25
[Frank Gannon]

Brezhnev was also, as--as a famous photograph attests, much taken with Henry Kissinger's date, Jill St. John.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:04:34
[Richard Nixon]

Well, yeah, Brezhnev was pretty much of a ladies' man. I mean, he--he was always kind of bragging about that. He had a sort of a macho attitude and so forth. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Nixon did not particularly appreciate that aspect of him, and--I mean, not that she's prudish about it, but he--he made one crack at--at an airport, I recall, when we went down the line, and there were a lot of--several pretty girls who were there with flowers and so forth, welcoming us. This was in m--in Russia. And he turned to me with a little wink, and he said, "Would you want to take one of these with you?" And she didn't apprec--preciate that, and I understand it well. But, as far as Brezhnev is concerned, I remember at Camp David we had a little incident there which indicated that he had pretty good taste insofar as his ladies were concerned. I went over to pick him up--he was staying at one of the guest cottages called Dogwood--to bring him over to dinner, and he--a--a f--a big--I say "big"--she was a very handsome, full-b--bosomed Russian girl came out, and I shook hands with her. I was introduced to her, and his aide said it was his masseuse. And--and then I happened to put my hand up to my nose, and she was wearing Arpege, which is someone I've oi--[unintelligible]--one of my wife's favorite French perfumes, a very expensive one. So he had good taste.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:06:15
[Frank Gannon]

Do--do your intelligence briefings tell you, or does the gossip that you get from the N.S.C. or the State Department tell you whether a leader with whom you're negotiating plays around with women?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:06:25
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, yes.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:06:26
[Frank Gannon]

Does that--do you take that--is--does that have any practical--other than gossip--interest? Because everybody's interested….

Day 4, Tape 4
00:06:32
[Richard Nixon]

No. You--you--you've got to know what people are interested in. I--I--I don't--I must say--I--I don't go so far as to say that when you know that that you provide consorts for them when they come, although that has been known to happen in some countries. And it has also been known that--that some of the leaders--when they go to these countries, they ask for that. I remember Bourguiba, the president of the country of Tunisia, was speaking about Sukarno, the president of Indonesia, coming to Tunisia and speaking very deprecatingly of him. He said, "You know, here is this man coming to my country, and we had a lot of important things to talk about, and you know what--the first thing he said when we met? He wanted un femme, a girl." Well--so they furnished a girl.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:07:25
[Frank Gannon]

There's--there's a story that the usually unflappable Harold Macmillan was flapped when John Kennedy, in one of their meetings, told him that, unless he had sex three times a day, he got a headache.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:07:36
[Richard Nixon]

Well, he can take Extra Strength Tylenol for that.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:07:42
[Frank Gannon]

After the--after this poolside party, you gave a very small dinner for Brezhnev in your dining room. What was that like?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:07:52
[Richard Nixon]

A very emotional affair. At the dinner, now he's a Russian again. When we'd met earlier, he was a Communist, speaking about the Chinese. But he was a Russian. I proposed a toast at the end of the dinner, pointing out that this house was relatively small, but it was ours. The dining room seated only ten people, and ins--in short, that I hoped that what we did would help to bring peace for our children, for his children, and for our grandchildren, and for the children of the world. Well, he was very moved by that, and he--he got up out of his chair, and there were--tears were coming down his cheeks, and he gave me a bear hug--had a very responsive toast in which he endorsed that proposition. He wanted to feel, in a way--he wanted to feel that what he did, even though he still had uppermost the idea of extending Communist domination in the world, preferably without war--but he wanted to have the feeling that what he did contributed to a better world for children and grandchildren. A--and so, in that respect, he--he was very much--a--and then after that, after dinner, he wanted to see Mrs. Nixon and me alone. And he took us aside, and he had a little box with him about this big, and he took out a scarf, a beautiful scarf. He said it had been made by artisans in his home village, and he said, "Every stitch in this scarf represents affection from the people of Russia for the people of the United States and from Mrs. Brezhnev and me to you and to Mrs. Nixon." So, there's the Russian speaking. Now he wasn't giving us that little scarf because he thought that might have an effect in softening me up for negotiations about China and so on and so forth. He was giving it because there was a warmth about the man at times. So, as I say, as Communist, I could not have been more opposed to him. As a Russian--I could not help but like him--as a Russian, as a person.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:10:07
[Frank Gannon]

Within a couple of hours after this display of Russian sentimentality, weren't you exposed to some of his Communist side in a very direct way?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:10:16
[Richard Nixon]

Yeah. I'd gone to bed, not because I wanted to go, but there was nothing more to do. He excused himself right after dinner. We didn't sit around for coffee or brandy, and he said he'd had a very long flight and he wanted to go--and I s--rest, and I said, "Well, of course," because I knew the flight time had changed and so forth, and--however the case might be, I knew he was tired, or at least he said he was. So I went in, and I was reading in bed, and about ten o'clock, Manolo, our help, our--my aide, knocks on the door and said, "He wants to talk," and so Kissinger--I asked him what it was about, and he says, "Who knows about these people?" So I got dressed, and Brezhnev said to me, with a sort of apologetic smile, he says, "I couldn't sleep," and so Brezhnev, Kissinger, and I, along with Gromyko and Dobrynin, all went up to our tiny little library on the second floor at Casa Pacifica. In fact, it's the only area where there is a second floor. And from ten o'clock till one o'clock in the morning, we went through the same kind of an exercise we had gone through at the dacha in 1972, this time on the Mideast. He was insisting that the United States and the Soviet Union impose a statement of principles on the Israelis and on the Arabs. Now, what he really wanted was to get the Soviet Union into a position of having influence within the--the Mideastern area, and also to, of course--to put Israel into a position where it had to cave with regard to its demands for security before it could make peace. Well, we couldn't agree to anything like that. So it went on and on and on until he finally gave up around one o'clock in the morning and said he'd have to go back empty-handed.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:12:15
[Frank Gannon]

Was Brezhnev different away from his colleagues, away from the Kremlin?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:12:20
[Richard Nixon]

They all have a tendency, and Brezhnev is no exception, to be more forthcoming, not quite as stiff, away from their colleagues. I think before their colleagues they feel they're being watched. They have to put on a show. They've got to prove that they're very tough. They've got to show off. Away f--it's--it's like, for example, the same thing with congressmen and senators on television. One of the reasons that I'm not for televising sessions of the House and Senate or even of committees is that--that the congressmen and senators have got to show off, a--and showing off, they don't necessarily do what is best for the cause, whatever it may be. They're talking to the audience rather than to the issue. And so it was with Brezhnev. He'd be showing off in front of his colleagues--and so it was with Khrushchev--but you get in a private conversation and the hair comes down a g--a bit, they begin to be more forthcoming. I don't mean that they're going to be--make a deal that they wouldn't make publicly, but at least you can talk to them. They will--there's more running room for conversation. So, therefore, whenever possible, I tried to see him--as a matter of fact, any leader of a Communist country, or of another country, for that matter--alone, with a translator if necessary, and nobody else, at least for a time. I find that you usually make more progress in that kind of a meeting than in one where you have a whole bevy of people around you, because we all have a tendency--every leader--to attempt to prove himself, prove his manhood, so to speak, before his associates.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:13:54
[Frank Gannon]

Did you find that his--his jokiness, his sense of humor, was more unrestrained away from Russia?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:14:04
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, I think so. No. He wouldn't--he didn't--particularly after sort of the fool Khrushchev made of himself on occasion, he wasn't about to be undignified in the presence of his own people. For example, when he's w--at the White House, we were signing documents and that sort of thing--he spilled some champagne on his--happened to--

Day 4, Tape 4
00:14:24
[Frank Gannon]

There's a famous film of that.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:14:26
[Richard Nixon]

That's right--

[Frank Gannon]

Yes.

[Richard Nixon]

--on his tie, and he held his handkerchief up in front of the television camera, and he clowned it around a bit. And then, when we were signing the documents, he would look over at me signing, and then he'd sign as if he were racing to see who could sign the first, or last, or whatever the case might be. He'd never do that in the Soviet Union. Now that, of course, was still in public, but I just think it was different. He was a little bit less constrained.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:14:52
[Frank Gannon]

Do you feel that his cigarette box held any deep insights into his character?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:14:57
[Richard Nixon]

(Laughs.) He had a--he had a problem with regard to smoking. H shouldn't have smoked, because he had a cough on occasion, and--and he had other problems, too--health problems, and his doctor had told him not to smoke. So they rationed him on cigarettes, and he very proudly showed me his beautiful cigarette box. Incidentally, that was one of the differences between him and Khrushchev. Khrushchev would never have had a fancy cigarette box, and Khrushchev wore open shirt whenever he could, or--and wouldn't dream of wearing cufflinks. He usually wore the short-sleeved shirts, but Brezhnev and all of his colleagues--by the time we got there in '72, they all had beautiful gold cufflinks, and, in this case, this cigarette box which he showed me. And it had a timer on it. Every hour it'd pop up a cigarette. He was supposed to smoke only eight a day, or nine, or whatever the case might be, however he was up. So he'd--his timer--and he'd start smoking it. Then he had another package of cigarettes down in here, and in--in about--like another fifteen minutes he'd reach in, pull this package out, and smoke it, too. So, in other words, it didn't help much. But I think he considered it a game, in any event. I don't think it had any s--psychohistory meaning, as some of our amateur psychologists would agree.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:16:14
[Frank Gannon]

If you were, and I know that the last thing you would be is a psychohistorian, how would you psychoanalyze--psychohistoricize Brezhnev in terms of his background and in terms of his--the qualities of his personality and leadership?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:16:28
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I have so little, frankly, respect for psychohistorians that I don't even think I can comment on that. I saw him for what he was. I--I saw him as a self-assured leader of a very strong people, and one who would take advantage when he could--one, on the other hand, who recognized that he lived in a real world where sometimes it's best to make a deal rather than to, frankly, risk making war. And under the circumstances, that's about the way it seemed. But I--I'm not going to get into that psychohistory business.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:17:06
[Frank Gannon]

Was it his interest in Western movies that led him to his dealings with Chuck Connors, The Rifleman?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:17:14
[Richard Nixon]

Well, Connors had been--Chuck Connors had been in Russia. In fact, we had sort of worked that out as--in part of our exchange program. And Chuck Connors, who was a former baseball player--he was a fair baseball player before he went into the movies and a great big fellow, and so when he saw Khrushchev--I--I mean, when--where Chuck Connors saw Brezhnev ready to take off in the helicopter--he happened to be out there at the pad--San Clemente--Brezhnev waved to him, and Chuck Connors rushed over to him and just bodily lifted him up in the air, and they laughed. It was--Brezhnev was not a bit embarrassed.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:17:50
[Frank Gannon]

If Brezhnev had held up paper to one of the chandeliers at Camp David and said, "Can I have eight copies of this?" would they have been brought in ten minutes later?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:18:00
[Richard Nixon]

Well, we didn't have any taping equipment at Camp David, and, as a matter of fact, we also did not have television cameras, as far as I know, any time. I mean, the--no administration. There was taping. Johnson taped, and, of course, Eisenhower taped, and Kennedy, and the rest, but the point is that what K--Henry was referring to was something very different. He was referring to a television camera up there in that chandelier, which very possibly they did have, a--and which, incidentally, could tell you a great deal in the event that television cameras were in the bedroom, because they often used them for purposes of blackmail.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:18:36
[Frank Gannon]

If people know--

[Richard Nixon]

We--we've never gotten that sophisticated.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:18:40
[Frank Gannon]

Or that lucky.

[Action note: Both laugh.]

[Frank Gannon]

If--if--since people know that every so often a diplomat is--an American diplomat, is expelled for having been caught en flagrante delicto in such a case, they have to know that they're being set up. How do--how do people get caught in such an obvious way?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:18:58
[Richard Nixon]

Well, part of it is stupidity, and part of it is--I think I'd just leave it to stupidity. I--I can't say that it's all emotion and affection and love--not really.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:19:13
[Frank Gannon]

Do you think that the--that the State Department or the C.I.A. didn't have Brezhnev bugged in Blair House or at Camp David or even at the Casa Pacifica?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:19:25
[Richard Nixon]

No. They didn't--no, sir. I wouldn't have allowed it. No, at C--

Day 4, Tape 4
00:19:28
[Frank Gannon]

Are you sure you would have known about it?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:19:29
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, yes. I think so. Oh, maybe not, but I think so. No, Camp David did not have any taping equipment. Neither did Casa Pacifica. Now, in Johnson's period, the ranch was taped. I don't know what the situation was in Kennedy's period. But Camp David, the White House living quarters, Casa Pacifica were never taped.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:19:52
[Frank Gannon]

Is it not, then, our policy to--to bug foreign leaders who come…here?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:19:59
[Richard Nixon]

We bug them, but we don't do it here. For example, it's been quite well known that both in this country and in the Soviet Union we attempt to bug each other's embassies, and we attempt to bug a lot of other embassies in this country, and should, because that's expected to be done. As a matter of fact, there's also evidence to the effect that Brezhnev's car was bugged.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:20:28
[Frank Gannon]

By us.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:20:29
[Richard Nixon]

By us. That's right. Not here in this country, but in the Soviet Union. A--and one of the reasons that the release of the Pentagon Papers caused great concern in the C.I.A. was that one of the items in the Pentagon Papers could only have come from the fact that we had Brezhnev's car bugged.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:20:52
[Frank Gannon]

If--if all this bugging is going on all over the world, why do we draw a line at--when--at--at our own shores when they come here, when presumably what we learn could be very useful in terms of the way they're discussing negotiations that are going on?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:07
[Richard Nixon]

Well, I'm not the best one to comment on that. (Laughs.)

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:11
[Frank Gannon]

I think we have reached a--a point where we should--

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:14
[Richard Nixon]

[Unintelligible.]

[Frank Gannon]

--just before Summit III, where we should probably--

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:17
[Offscreen voice]

Don't take your mikes off, gentlemen. Just continue to converse. I need to get a couple of cutaway shots here.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:25
[Frank Gannon]

The--actually, you answered my question, t--because the evidence about the bugging of the car was pre-Nixon--was Johnson. The--the--the Pentagon Papers' evidence of--

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:36
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, sure.

[Frank Gannon]

--bugging of Brezhnev's car--

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:37
[Richard Nixon]

Mm-hmm.

[Frank Gannon]

--was under Johnson.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:38
[Richard Nixon]

But that was--that was abroad, though.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:40
[Frank Gannon]

Yeah. In Russia.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:42
[Richard Nixon]

In Russia. Oh, sure. But I hope we still do it.

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:44
[Frank Gannon]

Now what about the--between--between you and me, what about the (Indian Cabinet Room)?

Day 4, Tape 4
00:21:49
[Richard Nixon]

Oh, that was bugged, of course. Oh, sure, but I'm--I'm going to put it a different way. I say we just learned--an absolutely unimpeachable source. Then you can press me, and I say, "Because we ha--"

Day 4, Tape 4
00:22:01
[Action note: Sound cuts off. Silent shots from various angles.]

Day 4, Tape 4
00:23:49
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

Day 4, Tape 4
00:23:55
[Action note: Picture returns without sound.]

Day 4, Tape 4
00:23:56
[Action note: Color bars appear on screen.]

Day 4, Tape 4
00:26:01
[Action note: Screen goes black.]

 

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