Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 13, 1983, part 2.

NIXON: "--thats one thing we're going to change." And I really--I really ripped up Haldeman pretty good on that. He took it well. I said, "No more." I said, "I have slept in those Claridge beds before. They're not the same, but I have slept in beds everyplace, and I am not going to have you carry the bed around in a separate plane so I can have the same bed to sleep in." We're all a little different.

GANNON: At Summit III, did Brezhnev address the question of whether he had encouraged the Arabs--

NIXON: Yes.

GANNON: --in the 1973 Yom Kippur War?

NIXON: He was very defensive about it and said that, as a matter of fact, he not only had not encouraged them, but he tried to deter them. But, in my view, I just ignored it. I said, "Well, let us not let the major powers be drawn into conflict about what happens in the Mideast," and I compared the Mideast with the B--with the Balkans. I said we mustn't let that happen. And--so I just let him--I let him, of course, deny that it happened. I didn't try to argue with him 00:01:00about it, but--

GANNON: Was there any question but that it had happened, that they had encouraged the Arabs?

NIXON: I don't--I don't think it was a question of their encouraging them, but I think there was a question of them n--of them not, perhaps, discouraging them.

GANNON: Good.

NIXON: Now, incidentally--you through?

GANNON: If you want to go on--

OFF SCREEN VOICE: We have to change tapes here. [unintelligible] We'll just change the tapes. You want to take five? Okay. [unintelligible]

GANNON: [Unintelligible] leaders.

NIXON: Yeah, see, that's my point.

GANNON: Yeah, yeah.

NIXON: The '73 war--

GANNON: There's not that much in and of itself.

NIXON: The '73 war, the substantive part, in other words, why the--the--the--the questions you remember, about the Mideast, the Jewish lobby. 00:02:00That's what I would suggest. And then the others can go in the leaders section.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: Uh, Frank, uh--we want a shot of you for the question.

GANNON: Yep.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay. [unintelligible] Keep the--

NIXON: The way I want to get at this question is that do you--

OFF SCREEN VOICE: Do we have it now, Roger?

OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible]

NIXON: Do you really--

OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible]

NIXON: Do you really think the Soviet leaders--

OFF SCREEN VOICE: That's it.

NIXON: --were for peace, and that gets the--

OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible]

NIXON: --other thing in. I think that's it, though--see what I mean?

GANNON: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: And that gets it--we'll see if--I think it may fit in.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible]

OFF SCREEN VOICE: S--stand by.

NIXON: [Clears throat.]

OFF SCREEN VOICE: Four. Three. Two. One.

GANNON: The Soviet leaders talk a lot about peace. Your conservative critics, the anti-dtentists who'd say that somewhere in the bowels of the Kremlin there is a safe wherein is a piece of paper with a number--with the number more of Soviets or Communists that would have to survive after nuclear war than the Americans, and as soon as they--or than Westerners--and as soon as they reach that number they'll push the button. Do you think that the--the Soviets, for all their talk about it, really do care about peace?

NIXON: Well, we, to our credit, are for peace as an end in itself. They are for peace as a means to an end. They're for victory. However, that does not mean they want war. They realize that if war comes, it would be so destructive that 00:04:00victory would be meaningless. So what they want to do is to develop the strength so that they can win without war, and that means develop strength that will be credible--that if war comes that they would come out ahead, whatever that may mean. But if you ask about their attitude toward war, they have deep feelings about that, because they went through World War II--I mean the present leadership. The new leadership, when--further on--maybe they will not have it. But I remember the conversations that we had on our last summit un--trip--a conversation in an airplane, and on one occasion they were talking about the terrible situation during World War II. And Brezhnev spoke of war in wintertime, how terrible it was because the corpses'd be frozen in such grotesque shapes. 00:05:00And I said, "Just like a tragic ballet." And then Gromyko said, "Well, in summer, when it's hot, and the bodies rot, it's just as bad." And so they'd been through a lot. They don't want to have that happen again. So they--I think they have mixed emotions, but there's no question that they want to avoid war if they can. They want to win without it.

GANNON: There's going to be a lot of--increasing pressure for a summit, especially as the '84 presidential election gets nearer. Is there anything to be gained by a Reagan-Andropov summit at this point?

NIXON: Well, the first thing to be gained is to reduce the possibility of either miscalculating with regard to the other. That's why it's important that they know each other, so that, one, they don't get the impression that either the one or the other is going to be belligerent and engage in a rash act and 00:06:00therefore is totally unreasonable, or, on the other hand, which is even worse, in my view--to get the impression that the other, in the c--in this case President Reagan, might be susceptible to being pushed around. Therefore, to have that kind of hard-headed talking, which is the kind of talking we had with Brezhnev in 1973 in San Clemente with regard to the Mideast, which meant that when I called the alert and then sent him a hotline message, he thought that it might be credible.

GANNON: This was the nuclear alert in 1973?

NIXON: Nuclear alert in 1973. An alert works--a hotline message works best when your opposite number knows you and believes that--that you are not a rash person, but that you are not one that will take action u--unless you are prepared to follow through. I think it's very important to get that across. So 00:07:00that's one purpose, but beyond that purpose there must be agreements. I think there probably will be an arms control agreement of some sort. I think it's very important, however, not to make that the centerpiece of the summit, even though many will try to do so, because what we have to understand is that arms control should never be an end in itself. The purpose of arms control is to reduce the danger of war. If you were to cut nuclear arms in half, as President Reagan is trying to do, and if they were to agree to that, you'd still have one hell of a war if you had disagreements on political issues that lead to war. Historically, we will find that it is not the existence of arms that leads to war, but failure to resolve political differences that lead to their use. That's why there should be no arms control agreement unless that is linked to political issues and 00:08:00political conduct. Otherwise, it does not serve the purpose of reducing the danger of war. The second point we should have in mind is that a summit provides an opportunity to move forward in the areas that we were beginning to move in in 1972, '73, and '74 in the economic area. Now, there are many that suggest that that's a great mistake. The Russians are in deep economic trouble--which they are--they have other problems--and that we shouldn't bail them out. I'm not for bailing them out, but, on the other hand, we have to realize that the greatest advantage of the West--I speak of the United States, Western Jeurope [sic]--Europe, and Japan--Europe and Japan--have over the Soviet bloc is economic, about a four-to-one advantage. We should use that advantage as a carrot and a stick, and, incidentally, before that summit, it w--it's very important that President Reagan, to the extent possible, get cooperation and agreement among our European allies and the Japanese--that they will support a 00:09:00united front on the economic area. What I am suggesting here i--is that we ought to try to accomplish at the summit level two general principles. One is we should take the profit out of war, and by taking the profit ah [may mean "out of"]--war what we have to do is to have arms control agreements based n equality of strength, so that any a--potential aggressor will know that he will lose more than he may gain from war. That is why the U.S. defense buildup is essential, essential in order to get an arms control agreement and essential in order to take the profit out of war. But you must combine that with what I call another pillar for peace, and that is you must increase the rewards for peace. And by the rewards for peace, I mean to give the Soviet Union an economic stake 00:10:00in avoiding war. That doesn't mean technological trade that will build up their military, but it does mean in other areas to provide economic cooperation in ways that will give them a stake in maintaining the peace.

GANNON: You've talked about the--what has been called the madman theory, involving Nixon--that, with your background of strong anti-Communism, Henry Kissinger was able to talk to the Russians and to the North Vietnamese and say that, if--unless you negotiate in a serious way, Nixon is just erratic enough that he might do something dangerous. Is there a Madman Theory that applies with someone as--as amiable and someone with no foreign policy background like President Reagan? Are they going to f--fear him?

NIXON: Well, it isn't just what I would call a madman theory. I think that overstates it. I remember Johnson telling me in nineteen s--'59--or '69, I should say--that Johnson told me when he came to the White House that he felt 00:11:00that one of his mistakes was to give the Soviet an impression that we wanted peace and we would pay almost any price to get it. He said--he said, "One of th--the advantages that Ike had"--he referred--he always called him "Ike"--I never did. But he said, "One of the advantages that Ike had--Ike had was that the Russians were afraid of Ike, afraid of him because he had been the great commander in World War II, and because of his military background, and just because of the kind of man he was," even though Eisenhower was a very amiable, pleasant, grandfatherly type, but they knew that beneath that exterior was a very cold, tough fellow.

GANNON: Do you think they were afraid of you?

NIXON: Oh, yes. Well, they were afraid of me, though, not because of my appearances and not because of my speeches, but because of what I had done. There is nothing that added more to my credibility, certainly with the Russians, and with others as well, than that I took great risks in order to bring the war 00:12:00to Vietnam to a--to a conclusion, to assure the withdrawal of our forces. The incursion into Cambodia--the purpose of that was to shorten the war, to make sure that our withdrawal program could go forward on schedule, and to save American lives, and it worked. The fact that w--we--three weeks before the summit meeting in Moscow, which we wanted,--which they wanted as well--that we bombed and mined Haiphong after there was a great North Vietnamese offensive supported by Soviet tanks and guns, which we could not tolerate--I remember people said, "Well, you can still go to Moscow even though Saigon is lost." I said, "No way." I said, "We--I can't be sitting across the table from Brezhnev when Soviet tanks are rumbling through the streets of Saigon." And that's why we did what we did, and despite all the predictions by some of our Soviet experts to the effect that they would then have no choice but to cancel the summit, it 00:13:00made them, really, I think, more eager to have it. A--and the other thing which I think may have had some impact on their thinking was that even after the elections of 1972, the December bombing, which was the critical action that was taken in order to bring--break the b--deadlock in Paris and have the peace negotiation. That was a very difficult decision, but it was necessary. Now, all of these actions--you don't take them in order to prove that you're a madman or that you're a tough guy or macho and the rest. It's simply--you take them when it is in the interest of your foreign policy, and also to make sure that you are a credible leader, a credible leader when you meet with others or when they take actions that you want to oppose.

GANNON: Have any of the presidents since you taken any similarly tough actions vis--vis the Soviets? It seems that with Afghanistan, with Poland, with the 00:14:00extension--use of surrogate troops into other parts of the world, that we've just acquiesced.

NIXON: [unintelligible]

GANNON: Does Reagan have the kind of credibility going in that you had?

NIXON: Well, let me say, fortunately, President Reagan, and President Carter before him, didnt have a war, which would have given them the opportunity to take action in defense of our own forces, which I had and which I used. On the other hand, I think what President Reagan has done in terms of rearming the United States--that that gives a message. I don't think that the rhetoric is nearly as important as that, and his fighting a bloody battle with the Congress in order to get the MX through and in order to get his military budget approved--it's that kind of action that has effect on the Soviet, not a lot of flamboyant words. You see, they're masters at propaganda, and they see through it.

GANNON: Do you think President Reagan can be pushed around?

NIXON: No, I don't think so, not in the international area. In the domestic area, all presidents have to do some compromising from time to time--in other words, take a half a loaf or get nothing. And in this area, people should not misinterpret his having to give ground on his economic programs because he simply didnt have the votes, didn't control the House of Representatives--they should not feel that because he gave ground there that in dealing in foreign policy, where he does have more of a free hand, he's going to be a compromiser--a compromiser where our interests would not be served by it.

GANNON: Moving on to China--what--what was it that set Richard Nixon, the inveterate anti-Communist and supporter of Taiwan and friend of Chiang Kai-shek over many years, down the long road to Peking?

NIXON: Well, what brought us together--what brought the Chinese and the Americans together was not a con--convergence of ideas but a convergence of interests. I begin with that proposition, and then to determine how that came about, we have to understand that my history in that part of the world goes back a long way. I was first in the Far East in 1953--traveled to Japan, all the countries outside, on the perimeter of China. And I saw then what the Chinese were doing, in terms of exporting revolution to Indonesia, to the Philippines, to Thailand, to--to Vietnam, and so forth and so on. And then I also had an opportunity to continue to follow what was happening in Asia during that period, to talk to Asian leaders, to talk to people like Romulo of the Philippines, who 00:17:00was still living and still a foreign minister, a strong anti-Communist but one that felt that some dialogue between the United States and China should take place under the proper circumstances. And then, in 1963, when I took a trip abroad, I saw, independently, de Gaulle and Adenauer, and each independently raised the question with me that the United States should probably reconsider its relationship with the People's Republic of China. Here are two strong anti-Communists--had no illusions about the Chinese--but they felt that we should do so. In 1967, I took another trip to the Far East, and after that I wrote an article for Foreign Affairs indicating that, looking to the future after Vietnam, it was important to reevaluate the US-Chinese relationship. I remember one of the first memorandums I sent to Henry Kissinger in 1969 after being inaugurated--it was a week after being inaugurated--was to initiate on a 00:18:00private basis a study of our relationship with Peking and with Taiwan and so forth. And so events began to follow events. Those who were surprised in 1971--in fact, the announcement was made on July the fifteenth of 1971 that I would be going to China--simply hadn't been following. They hadn't read the article in Foreign Affairs in 1967. They hadn't paid any attention to the fact that we had relaxed travel ext--resrictions. We had allowed trade where we hadn't allowed it previously. They didn't pay that much attention when the ping-pong team came here--or ours went there, I should say. And they--and interestingly enough, their surprise, I think, is--is rather surprising, because 00:19:00when d--Henry Kissinger was in China, or on his way to China, in July of 1971, I made a speech in Kansas City. It was a rather long speech, about our relationships in the world generally and particularly with the People's Republic of China, and hinted very strongly there that we should make moves toward normalization and so forth. And yet when we asked for the television time to make that three-minute announcement with regard to the trip to China on July 15, 1971, none of the television commentators, with all their brilliant investigative sup--reporters, saw--were able to make any predictions. One suggested it was probably about another withdrawal from Vietnam, and another suggested it might have been with regard to some problems we were having with Europe. The point was, I had tried to give them the message, but very carefully, of course, not breaking the secrecy pattern which we had. But now, having said all that, what brought us together was not, I emphasize, the fact that I had 00:20:00changed my view with regard to Chinese Communism. I had not. What brought us together were our interests and not because of agreement on ideas or any change in ideas.

GANNON: How does one go about--there must have been a lot of secret, behind-the-scenes diplomacy. You were sending signals, but there had to be a lot going on that--that even the most astute commentator who didn't know couldn't have seen.

NIXON: Well, I think first we have to understand why it was necessary to have it secret. And I will make the blunt statement--without secrecy, we would never have had the China initiative. It was not possible. They had to have it far more than we. They had to have it, because there was great opposition within the Chinese hierarchy itself to any new relationships with the United States. And, 00:21:00as a matter of fact, Lin Piao, who had opposed it, took off, as Chou with a little smile told me when we first met, on a trip which was to take him to Moscow, and his plane disappeared, which tells us one thing or may tell us something else.

GANNON: Do you think they liquidated him because of his opposition?

NIXON: I would not be surprised. That was the implication, at least, that I got from the conversation.

GANNON: Do you think--

NIXON: But be that as it may, what happened there was that Mao Tse-tung and--this is--in this case, Chou En-lai, had made a command decision that, despite the fact that ideologically the United States was their major enemy--we're a capitalist country, they're a Communist country--that as far as their strategic interests were concerned, that a new association with the United States was absolutely essential, because while we disagreed totally on ideology, we had one common concern, and that was the growing Soviet threat--threat to 00:22:00China--and its expansionism in other areas. And the Chinese knew that there was no country in the world except the United States which would be able to contain that threat in the event it were aimed at China. And that is what brought us together, in one sense. But I should go further than that. If anybody would read my article in Foreign Affairs and other statements I've made prior to and since that initiative was undertaken, they would note that I always come through with this theme: even if there were no Soviet Union, it was essential that the United States move now and--move when it did, I should say--in rapproachment with China. And the reason for that is fundamentally that one-fourth of all the people in the world live in the People's Republic of China. It has enormous natural resources, and the Chinese people, as Chinese, are among the most capable people in the world. Look what they've done in Taiwan. Look what 00:23:00they--in non-Communist areas, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, San Francisco--you name it. And once that power is mobilized, it is going to be an enormous force in the world, for good or for bad. I think de Gaulle hit it, i--in his usual way, in 1969, most effectively when he said, cryptically, "Better for you to recognize China now when they need you than to wait until later when their power is such that you will need them." And so, in order to build the kind of a world that we want our grandchildren to live in in the twenty-first century, it was essential that the United States, the most powerful and prosperous in the three wor--free world, have a new relationship with the People's Republic of China. And finally, I would say, for some of those who 00:24:00object to that initiative, if it had not been undertaken, and if China, due to the fact that they did not--not have any guarantee of their security from the United States vis--vis the Soviet, had been forced back under the Soviet umbrella, the geopolitical relationship and balance in the world would be almost hopelessly against us at this time. It was necessary to do for that reason, but, apart from that, it was essential to do for the next century.

GANNON: Did you--did you use intermediary governments in your initial relations with Peking?

NIXON: Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, the Rumanians played a very significant part--Ceaucescu. I had discussed it with him in 1967, and he was very helpful, and his ambassadors were, and they carried messages back and forth. Curio--curiously enough, a--another one who carried a message--this isn't so well-known--was Haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia. I had discussed China 00:25:00with him, and Chou En-lai was telling me about Haile Selassie coming there and telling--talking to him and Mao, and Mao asked Chou En-lai--Mao always liked to say outrageous things--he said, "Do you think that the--that the devil of capitalism should sit down with the devil of Communism?" And then he said Haile Selassie went on and indicated he thought it would serve a useful purpose, or words to that effect. Incidentally, when Chou En-lai told me that, I said, "You know, I think many of the people in the media think the only reason that I didnt wear a hat when I came to China is that I couldn't get 'em over--get one over my hand--i--is--I think that--and then, when Chou En-lai told me that, I just responded by saying, "You know, I think many people in the media thought that the reason that I didn't wear a hat when I came to China--that I couldn't 00:26:00find one that would fit over my horns." And he, who always appreciated a little joke, laughed uproariously at that. But, in any event, Haile Selassie, Ceaucescu, but above everybody else, the Pakistani, Yahya Pakistan played a very important role, and, of course, as we all know, it was the Pakistani who helped provide the cover for Henry Kissinger. That's where he had a so-called "bellyache" a--and had to be--go to the hospital, and all the press, of course, took off and enjoyed the Pakistani scenery while he flew into China secretly, and then our bombshell announcement came out.

GANNON: Whose idea was the bellyache?

NIXON: I think it was--it was--I think we agreed to it together, after very, very intensive negotiation.

GANNON: What was your reaction when you finally heard that the invitation to come to Peking was being extended from Chou En-lai?

NIXON: Well, we had had several messages, feelers, on it up to that time, and--and each one of them we had to reject. Chou En-lai had sent messages indicating that he had heard from the Pakistanis. Ceaucescu sent us a message indicating that he'd heard from the Chinese, but in each case the Chinese were conditioning any meeting or any change in relationship on our, frankly, dumping Taiwan, and they were also conditioning any meeting that might occur between me and Chou En-lai on our agreeing to have Taiwan as the major subject of discussion. And I could not agree to that, so we kept saying no, it would have to be without conditions, in effect. And finally the message came through that Chou En-lai would welcome us.

GANNON: Who brough you the news?

NIXON: And the news was brought by Henry Kissinger. It was after a state dinner, and I was up in the Lincoln sitting room going over my notes for the next day's meetings, and Henry came in huffing and puffing. He--he must have run 00:28:00all the way from the Situation Room, which is about two hundred yards away from the sitting room in the president's--and he said, "This is the most important message between heads of government since World War II." And then he read the message as I read it, he beamed, and the message, in effect, said, "We will welcome the president of the United States to meet with Chou En-lai, a--and then we will also welcome Dr. Kissinger to come to prepare for the meeting." And he said, "This message"--he had a--w--with their great sense of humor and their subtlety, it ended with an interesting clause. He says, "This message is somewhat different from the usual diplop-matic [He probably means "diplomatic."] message because it's from a head to a head through a head." "From a head"--head of state Chou En-lai--"through a head," of course, was Yaya Pakistan--"to a 00:29:00head." The message, of course, since we had no relations with China, didn't come from the Chinese. The Pakistani ambassador had delivered it to Henry Kissinger, and then Kissinger to me. So it was "from a head, through a head, to a head."

GANNON: Did you celebrate?

NIXON: Oh, yes. That was one of those occasions that I thought it was important to. I usually have nothing to drink, particularly in those years when we had such intensive schedules after dinner. But somebody had given me, that year, a--a bottle of Courvoisier brandy. It was supposed to be, oh, several--twenty, thirty years old. And so I went down to the hall, opened the brandy, and put a little in a snifter for Henry and for me, and we both tipped our glasses to what we thought was a rather historic meeting.

GANNON: How much was the opening to China, the initiative to China, Henry Kissinger's policy, and how much was Richard Nixon's policy?

NIXON: It was both. We came ac--we came to the conclusion independently, however. After all, I had never discussed the China initiative with Henry Kissinger. He was not my advisor. He was Nelson Rockefeller's in 1960s--in the 1960s and in 1967. And when I--but he went along with it and f--and agreed with me, with the conclusion that I had reached, that there was no question that he independently had arrived at the same conclusion. But i--if--if--if he had not had a president who wanted to move in that direction, there was no way it could have been accomplished, and he, of course, has been the first to acknowledge that.

GANNON: If you had not had a Henry Kissinger, could it have been accomplished?

NIXON: Yes. Not as, I--I dont think as e--effectively, as well. Henry was a master at intrigue. He went to Paris twelve times without being discovered, and--and he was able to get into China there and be there three days without 00:31:00having it get out. But I must say that--and he--and he handled the negotiations with Chou En-lai brilliantly. On the other hand, I had made the determination before I ap--appointed Henry Kissinger as my chief advisor in the foreign policy field--I had made the determination to move in that direction, and I would have implemented it another way.

GANNON: With the presidential election coming up at the end of 1972, were you unaware of the fact that this announcement of the opening to China was going to be an enormous political coup for you?

NIXON: Well, many thought it would be, but it really wasn't. That's--that's, again, people in the media writing with their hearts rather than their heads, because it--it gained us some and lost us some, but perhaps overall it was a wash. As a matter of fact, I remember so well that H--Henry and I disagreed on 00:32:00this, not just as a matter of appraisal. But he said, "You know, you're going to go way up in the polls when the China announcement is made." Bob Haldeman thought so, too. I said, "I'm not so sure of that." I said, "It's going to cost us some, too." And it did. The polls didn't move up at all after the Jula--July fifteenth announcement, and, curiously enough, even after the dramatic visit to Peking in 1972, the polls did not go up. And the reason was that those who favored the initiatives for the most part were liberals, who were against me politically a--and would, frankly, have been just as happy if somebody else had done it. Those who opposed the initiative were conservatives. They were disillusioned. Those--and b--those who favored it and those who opposed it both did so for mistaken reasons. I mean by that, those who favored the initiative felt that, "Well, finally this old red-baiter Nixon has learned that the Chinese 00:33:00are not all that bad." In other words, in effect, "He's got a little soft on Chinese Communism." Those who opposed the initiative, those that were pro-Taiwan and so forth, felt that I had deserted them, also because they thought, well, I had getten--gotten soft on the Chinese Communists and so forth. And they were both wrong on that score. It had nothing to do with my attitude toward Communism. I was still against it, as I had always been. It had to do with my analysis of the long-term interests of the United States and of our current problems in terms o--of our competition with--in other ways with the Soviet Union.

GANNON: In--before you went to China, Andr Malraux came to the White House and talked to you about what you would find. What do you remember from his visit?

NIXON: I had met Malraux for the first time when I went to Paris in 1969, and he was one of de Gaulle's great supporters, more liberal than de Gaulle, but 00:34:00admired de Gaulle as a great man, as I did. And I noted then that he had had a--a stroke. Well, it was a stroke which had left him paralyzed on one side. It was very difficult for him to talk, but I had read some of his books. He's a brilliant writer. And I gave a dinner for him and saw him before dinner at s--at some length. And even with his--it was just painful to watch him talk, you know, with his m--mouth drooping down like that, but--but the words came out in a torrent as he described China. I asked him, "What are they like?", because he knew Mao and he knew Chou En-lai and the rest. And he says, "Mao has a vision. He is possessed by a vision. The man is a sorcerer," and he went on and on as to 00:35:00what Mao was like. And then, finally, after he had described him, he said, "It's worth the trip."

GANNON: Did he talk about the--the problem of the aging of the Chinese leadership?

NIXON: Well, that was his conclusion with regard to Mao. He said, "Mao is a colossus, but he's a colossus facing death. And as he looks at you, he will think, 'How young you are.'" And I thought that was interesting, because at that time I was fifty-nine.

GANNON: Did--in your--

NIXON: In other words, what was interesting to me is that you would expect Malraux to say, well, as he looked at me, "Here is the representative of the great United States. Here is the anti-Communist. Here is the capitalist," et cetera. But no. He said, "As he looks at you, wh--what--what he will think about--how young you are, because he is a colossus, but he is a colossus facing death."

GANNON: Did--I--did you feel that, unlike a lot of people, he had a sense of the adventure of what you were doing?

NIXON: Yes. Let us understand that the decision to go to China was a difficult one for us--difficult for me because I knew Taiwan. I had great respect for Chiang Kai-shek, for Madame Chiang Kai-shek. I knew of the Taiwan miracle. It's a miracle like Japan, what they have done there. Taiwan today, for example, with seventeen million people, exports more than the People's Republic of China, with a billion people. That's an indication of how--what an economic success it was.

GANNON: How did you break the news to Chiang Kai-shek?

NIXON: It was broken through diplomatic channels.

GANNON: Should you not have done that personally, given your--

NIXON: No--

GANNON: --ties with him, and--

NIXON: It--it wasn't--it would not have been the appropriate thng to do. We had to do--we had to treat them all the same, and so in--

GANNON: Surely that was a special relationship, though.

NIXON: In each--in each--but in each case--in each case, we felt that it was important not to treat one different from the others. We had to think of them, we had to think of the Japanese, we had the British, and so forth and so on. So we decided to do it through routine challenge--channels in all cases.

GANNON: You--in your account of the meeting with Malraux, you des--you describe a d--a dream that Lincoln had and related it to your going to China.

NIXON: Yes. This--this dream of Lincoln's is one that most biographers have carried, and I think therefore it is probably on the mark, although much of the stories about any great man like Lincoln are apocryphal. In this case, it was supposed to be a dream that he had that he recounted to his cabinet the day before he was shot, and Lincoln often had dreams before great events. And he 00:38:00said this was a dream that he had had before Gettysburg--he'd had it before another great victory and so forth, and he said that--and it was repeated that night. And it went something like this, that he was on a singular indescribable vessel moving with great rapidity toward a distant, indistinguishable shore. And I repeated that to Malraux, and Malraux said, "Well, that is--is very interesting." And he said, "As far as Mao is concerned, his shore is death." He said, "And as far as you are concerned, you must avoid the shoals on either side." So that was the--s--some of the conversation.

GANNON: Did you regret that de Gaulle, who would have been able to understand 00:39:00the enormity of the--o--of--of what you were doing, wasn't alive to see the opening to China?

NIXON: Yes. Yeah, and, may I say, and Adenauer as well, because Adenauer and de Gaulle independently, anti-Communist though both were, were sophisticated enough and geopoliticians enough to understand why it was necessary, something which it's very difficult for some of n--some of our good hard-line super-hawks who see the whole world in black and white and think that the only way that you're going to deal with Communism is to isolate it and collapse it. Well, I wish that were the case, but it is not going to happen that way. Peaceful change is the only thing we can hope for, and that's what we must always work for. We must never accept the division of the world as it is. They don't, and we shouldn't either.

GANNON: How did Malraux take his leave that night?

NIXON: Well, he--it was a rathy--rather moving scene. I escorted him to the north porti--portico, and his car came up, and he said--as he said goodbye, he said, "I am not de Gaulle." He said, "Nobody is de Gaulle, but if de Gaulle were here he would wish you well on your mission. He would salute you for what you are doing."

GANNON: What were your thoughts as the--as Air Force One first--f--came over the Chinese mainland and you--for better or for worse, you were there--you had done it?

NIXON: Well, I am not one of those that is given to try to develop profound historic thoughts because of some new adventure.

GANNON: Did you see it as an adventure?

NIXON: No. I saw it in a different way, not as an adventure, which trivializes 00:41:00a very important event. I knew it was a very important event historically. I knew it was a very important event from the standpoint of the interests of the United States, the interests of building a more peaceful world, for our children and grandchildren primarily, rather than just for ourselves. Also, however, I've--knew it was an adventure, just as many other Americans did, because China was an unknown land. I'd read about it all my life. It was a land of mystery, and the fact that we hadn't had communication with them for twenty-five years built up that mystery. And I remember Mrs. Nixon and I, as we were sitting in the plane looking down on this huge expanse of tiny farms and so forth and so on--it--we had a--a feeling about it that we had never had before. We had been already to seventy countries together, and I was to go to many more--as I'm now over ninety in the number of countries--and there was nothing like going into 00:42:00other countries that we experienced here going into China, because it was new, because it was exciting, and because it was very, very important. For example, we had been to Moscow in 1959. That was a very important visit, and coming to Moscow on that trip was a time of excitement, but nothing compared to what we felt as we went into China. We knew that we were at a watershed event in hum--human history.

GANNON: We have some film of your arrival at Peking in your first meeting with Chou En-lai. In fact, all we've got now is this still. Do you want to--can you describe what was going on there?

NIXON: Yes. I think that event was one that symbolized the trip more dramatically than anything else. As you'll note, I am shaking hands with him, and that's not unusual, because you always shake hands when you step off the 00:43:00plane with whoever is receiving you. I recall, incidentally, as I came down the steps before I shook hands, however, that he was clapping as I came down the steps, and I, of course, returned the clapping, and because I had learned that long before visiting other Communist countries. They always re--respond. Whenever you clap, they clap at the same time. And so, as we shook hands, it had particular symbolism, because I knew from the briefing papers that Chou En-lai wsa very sensitive about the fact that in 1954 at the Geneva Conference--that Foster Dulles had not--had refused to shake hands with him. He told an amusing anecdote about that--told me about the fact that Beetle Smith, who was--

GANNON: Chou En-lai told you?

NIXON: Yeah, Chou En-lai did. He tol--told me an amusing anecdote about that. He said that Beetle Smith, who was there with Dulles that--he said he wouldn't shake hands either, but what he did was that he held a coffee cup in his right 00:44:00hand and then gave him his sleeve on--on his left hand and he had to shake hands that way. He was rather amused by it at that time. So he--he considered that to be a very important handshake. And I remember as we drove in to the guest house through Peking. He said that handshake was over the vastest distance in the world, twenty-five years of no communication, which was a dramatic way of putting it. Now, incidentally, let me say, however, that if some of those--and they are legion--who believe that Foster Dulles was much too tough at that time, just so that they don't get the wrong idea, I well understand why Dulles didn't shake hands. It was a different time. We have to remember, in 1954, that was only shortly after Chinese troops had killed over fifty thousand Americans in Korea. It was at a time when Communist China was in expansionist policy. They 00:45:00were intervening through their--s--supporting guerrilla activities in the--in the Philippines, in Malaysia, in Thailand, Singapore. And so, under the circumstances, there was plenty of reason for Dulles not to be buddy-buddy with somebody who was a proclaimed enemy, not by what he said, but by what they were doing against our interest. But the situation had changed on them. China at the time we made this trip was no longer in an expansionary phase. They were supporting the Vietnamese, but not nearly as much as the Russians, who had taken over there as the main supplier of arms to the Vietnamese. They were primarily, at this time--at the time we went there, concerned about their own security, their strategic security, conc--and of course the possibilities for progress 00:46:00within the country. So, under the circumstances, I thought it was proper that we should begin with a handshake.

GANNON: We have film also of your reviewing the honor guard at the airport in Peking with Chou En-lai. This is another case where it's just a still, if you can comment on it. There, you see--

NIXON: Yeah.

GANNON: Mao was a member of the honor guard. There we are. And that, in fact, is film.

NIXON: The interesting thing to note about that guard is the size of the men. Chou En-lai, who had a great attention to detail despite the fact that he is one of the busiest men in the world, a head of government of the most populous country in the world, personally picked people for a honor guard of that sort, as I later learned. As you will note, Chinese are supposed to be not as tall as we are, but most of those people were over--all of them, I think, were over six 00:47:00feet tall, and they were magnificently trained. I remember that, as you 'll note, the reviewing officer looks each one in the eye, and, in their case, instead of looking straight forward, as most do in other countries, their eyes followed me as we went around. And so there was a feeling of motion that was almost hyponotic as we went down the line.

GANNON: Did--did he choose tall people and--and have this hypnotic sense to impress you with the strength of the Chinese armed forces?

NIXON: No. He didn't do that. I don't think the guard was one that was just for me. I think that was their regular honor guard. But honor guards generally are, except in this country where we have honor guards with multicolored uniforms and so forth--Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, all mixed in, which is ridiculous, incidentally--

GANNON: Why?

NIXON: Well, because it's not nearly as impressive as having one uniform. I much prefer it, and you should have an honor guard uniform.

GANNON: Does an honor guard make an impression that--that makes any difference to a visiting head of state?

NIXON: I think it does. There's probably--I think it particularly makes an impression on heads of state from smaller countries. After all, they--they expect to be treated with great respect, and an honor guard is part of the--the drill. It's more important than the quarters you stay in, the proper honor guard, the guns that go off, the national anthems, and so forth. I must say, to me, as impressive any--as anything there was not so much the honor guard but to hear the Chinese band play "The Star-Spangled Banner," and to play it well. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is a difficult song to play, and, boy, we have heard it mangled in some countries beyond belief. You could hardly recognize it. But the 00:49:00Chinese, curiously enough, musically, are fairly close to us. They seem to understand it, and they played it beautifully, just as they played "M--America the Beautiful," the same army band at the state dinner that they gave in the Great Hall of the People. They played it perfectly.

GANNON: What goes through your mind as you're standing there at an airport arrival ceremony and the anthem is played? Are you thinking about what you're going to do next or say next, or does itdoes it actually have a--an emotional impact or a--a--a psychological impact to hear your anthem played in a foreign country?

NIXON: Well, you know, I suppose this sounds a little corny, but I don't--I can hardly recall a time, either in a foreign country or on the great ceremonies on the South Lawn of the White House, when standing there at attention, hearing the anthem played, the flags furled, and so forth, when a little chill doesn't go up your back. It always has that effect on me.

GANNON: We have a--some film from Peking Television of your first meeting with Chairman Mao. How did you get word thatthat you were going to be summoned to his presence?

NIXON: Well, we didn't know that we would see him at all. In fact, when they made out the schedule, there was no indication that we were to have an appointment with him. We had heard that he had not been well, and all inquiries that were made, that Henry had made previously, were to the effect that no decision had been made as to whether or not we would see him. And so we arrived in the guest house and--wondering whether we were going to see him, and because some people thought--some of those who were covering the trip, the press, has already begun to speculate that Mao might snub us by not receiving us, which would have been quite a snub, because he had received Haile Selassie and people 00:51:00of that sort. But that wasn't the way it happened. I was actually--had taken off my clothes and sitting in my shorts prior to going in and taking a shower when Henry came in, again rather breathless, and said, "Mao wants to see you right away." So we rushed down and got into the cars and went over to his c--residence in Peking. I remember the usual Chinese entrance, a gateway. A sort of--red was the color I recall, which, of course, was quite appropriate.

GANNON: What--what were your first impressions on meeting him?

NIXON: Well, he said he didn't talk very well and some saidthe Chinese indicated that was because he'd had laryngitis, because--it was obvious, however, that he'd had some sort of a stroke. But he talked well enough. He could be understood well enough.

GANNON: In his pictures he looks fairly

NIXON: Yeah.

GANNON: --voluble

NIXON: Yeah.

GANNON: --and vigorous.

NIXON: W--well understood. Sometimes the words didn't tumble out as well as they might. I would like to have known him when he was much better. But compared 00:52:00to what he was in 1976, when he had had another stroke and when--he talked so poorly then that he just couldn't get the words out. And I remember how painful it was even to watch him when he couldn't get words out. He'd get one of the girl secretaries standing in back of him taking down every word that he said, and he'd grab the notepad, and then he'd write out what he was trying to say and hand it back to her, and then she'd translate it. He'd hear the translation, it'd be wrong, and he'd say, "No!" and grab it again and write it out. But this time, no problem like that. He--we had a very easygoing conversation. One thing that impressed me about his room was that it was very similar to that of Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion, the founder of the Israeli state, had a room just cluttered with all sorts of books, books open here and there and on the desk and 00:53:00so forth and so on. You know, you hear these days that the mark of a great executive or a good executive is a clean desk. That's not true. That--if you have a clean desk, you usually have an empty head. And in this case, the--Mao's room was a clutter of books. He obviously was a f--man who did a great deal of reading. As he indicated, too--he'd read my book Six Crises, which Chou En-lai had had translated into Chinese before even it was agreed Id make the visit. Some way or other, I think what appealed to them in that book is it was about struggle, and struggle, of course, is the theme that Mao and the Chinese Communists constantly emphasized at that period.

GANNON: Could you tell anything about the--from the relationship between the twofrom--between Mao and Chou En-lai--about the division of labor between them in terms of running China?

NIXON: Well, there was no question that Chou En-lai ran China. There was no question, however, that Mao was still chairman of the board, but he was sthe 00:54:00was not the chief executive officer in terms of carrying out things. But Chou En-lai was very deferential to Mao, deferential because every word that Mao uttered was gospel, and I noted, for example, that after that first meeting with Mao that Chou En-lai would often quote Mao as to what he'd said in that first meeting. But Mao made the point very clearly when he said, "Look. I'm not here to discuss the details. That's for the prime minister to discuss." He said, "I am here to talk about philosophy, general philosophy," and then he proceeded to do that.

GANNON: Were they friends, do youdo you think?

NIXON: Yes. I do not think close friends. I don't think there was a great deal of affection there. There was respect on both parts. Each needed the other. I think that's the way that it worked.

GANNON: How well-prepped on you were they?

NIXON: Oh, quite well. They, for example, had read what I had written. Example is that I had made th--a speech, for example, in Kansas City, which should have told the American press what to expect, and it got, I think, just minimal coverage in the American press. I don't think television covered it at all to speak of, but when Henry Kissinger saw Chou En-lai, Chu En-lai had that speech, which had been covered in the Chinese press, in front of him there and asked Henry whether he had seen it. Henry had not seen it, because it was not one that was--been prepared by the State Department or by the N.S.C. It was one that I had prepared by myself. And so he gave him a copy of it. Chou En-lai gave Henry Kissinger a copy of the speech I had made in Kansas City that the American press had paid no attention to, but which indicated very clearly that we were going forward on some sort of a Chinese initiative. So it does show you they paid attention to what we were saying and doing.

GANNON: Weren't they even aware of your taste in films?

NIXON: Yes. They'd done their homework, because they--first, they had a movie theatre and--where they said we could see anything we wanted to see--that is, of films, and--of their films. But Henry told me that Chou En-lai had h--read or heard that I had enjoyed the movie Patton, and so he had it s--produced and shown for him. Of course, he understood English, so it was--understood a lot of English, a lot more than he ever let on. He never spoke in English, however.

GANNON: What do you think Chou En-lai learned about you from having watched Patton?

NIXON: Oh, nothing particularly. The Pattonthe Patton movie was interesting to me not because of the war, but because of what it told us about the people. It was a fascinating study of Eisenhower, who never appears in person, of Bradley, of Montgomery, of Patton, and the rest. Just like Tolstoy's War of Peace--War and Peace, which is a great book, but I read it when I was in 00:57:00college, and my interest in it was not what it told about war and peace, but what it was--told about the characters, that Tolstoy was a master at describing. I mean, the people seemed to walk on the pages.

GANNON: Do you think that anybody who wants to understand you has to read S

THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE

GANNON: --ix Crises?

NIXON: No. They--they don't have to really read anything. They could observe what I have done and judge for themselves. I do not believe that any individual--what he writes should be the conclusive factor that determines how people are goig to praise him. After all, whatever anybody writes is through his own eyes and so forth. And what a person writes, I think, reveals very little.

GANNON: Didn't Mao's writings, though, reveal a lot and have a great, great impact?

NIXON: Not much about him. It revealed a lot about the Chinese Communist revolution. I remember speaking to Mao about his writings, and I said, "The chairman's writings"--I spoke