 Well, we got our troubles up here with the Dominican Republic. I've got a little problem I want to talk to you about. I'll ask your advice. Can you talk to Utahnt on a matter that the two of you would be the only two up there that would ever know it? Well, I can certainly guarantee it as far as my office is concerned. I've always found it in cases where I've had to communicate with him and told him secretly that nothing has ever happened. But I've never known whether he told anybody else or not. But there's certainly never been any leakage. And I think therefore my answer is yes. All right, I know that would be true of you without asking. But I think you better feel him out and see if in your judgment, if your prudent judgment is, you can tell him. But if you do so, make it clear that it's just the two of you because I'm keeping it to about three here. And I just cannot afford to be murdered on it and I don't want anybody to know it. I'm seriously considering and I'm going to notify our friends in Illinois and already the Russians and some other necessary people that we got the birthday coming up out there and we are going to stay out of the north part of the country for a while. Conditioned upon there taking similar action and letting up on their actions, we're going to have a rather extended pause of several days. And we're letting them know in advance that we're going to. If they take steps that endanger our security, well, we'll have to reconsider. If there's any indication that... This refers to the... Yup, yup, yup, yup, yup. Well, the infiltration from the north, we expect activities in the south. If they can show us that they can hold up and it does any good, why then we can go to other steps. But we're going to take the initiative, take the first one, close down in effect on all your bombings in the north. And see what, if any, reaction they have. We don't think they'll have any. We think this is just a lot of poppycock, just like the negotiation things, poppycock. But the Russians have been saying all along, well, if you quit your bombing, first they said that if you'd give us a policy, then we gave it to them. Then they say, well, if you don't want to negotiate, then we say, Baltimore, we negotiate. Then they say, well, if you don't want to stop your bombing, so we're going to stop it. And we're going to give them a chance if they'll do anything. And that includes everybody in the world that thinks that that's the way to solve it. And then we're going to look at our whole card every day as we go along. I would like for you to know that. And I'd like for you to know it. I don't want anybody else to know it. Because the first other person that knows it, I immediately lose three-fourths the support I got here. I get a hell of a domestic problem immediately. And I would be forced to do something I don't want to do, resume them. You'll get a good reaction, domestically. Well, they all are going to be raising hell while I'm doing it. And I'm not going to talk, and I'm going to just quiet out there. It doesn't want to say he can't do it on a count of booties. But I'm going to do it on a count of it, except I'd say so. And we're just going to try to ride it through for several days and see how we get through. Can you give me any indication of how long? Several days, several days. Do you think that there's a possibility here if you don't get any positive response from Hanoi or the other bases you touch of using this opportunity for the, using this, linking this up with one of the other alternatives we've discussed, and that is the Secretary General calling for discussions of the conditions for a succession of hostilities in the atmosphere of a U.S. suspension? Well, I'd be glad to go into that after we see what happens here. Now, we are notifying them. They have raised these questions with us from time to time. And we're notifying them through various tracks that we have. We've already notified the Russians direct. And we are notifying Hanoi. Hanoi's got a knife notifying Hanoi. Well, they are, and we are, too. Because that's one thing Lutank can do very quickly, is to notify Hanoi. Well, at least they're deliberate waiting, getting a word willingness to talk about these. We're doing that right now, direct. Direct? Yeah. And we just... Well, there may be a possibility. And this is all to be kept entirely quiet in the sense that there's to be no, when speculation starts... I don't want him or you to be having a press conference, or be given out a statement, or saying that this or that ought to be done during this very critical period of several days. And it's already on... There'll be some speculation about it, won't there? Well, I hope not, but I'm sure they will. I think the first thing they'll do is go to the colonels and... and Nong, and say, why didn't you bomb North Vietnam Tuesday night? Yeah, then Hanoi may leak it, too, won't it? And then they'll attack us on the ground that we're trying to bomb and that this is blackmailing. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. And we'll just have to... This is why I was wondering if you could introduce a third element, whether it's the Pope or SYG, or somebody else, to... they will at least this ought to be an evidence of good faith and inducement to you to come into negotiations to discuss the terms of a succession of hostilities. I think maybe there's a link here that you could make that would exploit more annotations than doing this in secret and just leading public speculation as to whether this was delivered or whether you were necessary for a military reason. Well, if it gets public speculation, we can't do it. If it gets out here where they definitely identified this as what it is, we will be stopped on several grounds. First, Quad can't do it. He can't survive it. And the second thing is I don't know what we could do in the Congress. I think that the liberals are not going to be with us anyway. They're going to be raising hell around all over the lot. And the only other support we got is very much against this kind of a move. Well, when will this start today? Well, it's already young. I was going to say that I was coming down to the cabinet meeting tomorrow. That's good. You come on down. I talked with him today. It might be that we could think of something else to do. That's good. My whole idea here has been, as I told you so long ago, to try to put the cat on their back by going the full road and letting if he calls for a ceasefire accepted, then they put them in a position of either having to reject it or accept it on unsatisfactory conditions. And it may be that we can link these two up. Very well. If he would do that. I don't think they have anything like this in mind. We don't think they're about to listen to it. But we think that there are enough fuzzy people in this country that really believe it, that we ought to try to show, to be able to, in our own conscience, be sure we had to try to have every alternative we could. Yeah, but I had always thought it would have been better to do that by public appeal for a ceasefire. You could if you could do it. If you had an ideal government, you had ideal situations, and you could do it out there just bolding, it would be probably good things to say, watch what happens a week. But since you can't do that, and you don't have that alternative open to you, we have to do it the way we're doing it and let him deny we're doing it, and so on, let them know that we're not doing it, and give them four days or eight days or whatever days that we decide. And if they will not react to it, then come back and say, now here's what we hadn't have done. Yes, and the government, and hell we can't even let our generals know it here. We almost have a walkout because they think it's a very tragic thing to do. So they're going to be less than a half a dozen people know that this is happening in this country. They're going to be, they told one man at the chairman, and they told the secretary, and they'll tell one or two other countries, and it'll be you too, and that's it. But I did want him to know it if in your judgment, he can keep it just to himself for several days. If he can't do it, I wouldn't tell him. Then you come down tomorrow, and you and George Ball and Mike and the rest of you can get together and explore any of these other possibilities. I think there might be something here that fits very neatly into the other. The alternative to a call for a ceasefire was the call for discussion of the terms of a ceasefire. Well, our people are fearful that we don't want to do this merely in return for a conference. We want to pull down our forces and return for their pulling down theirs, and then we go from there. But you don't expect they're going to call up to get a conference? We don't think they're going to call off anything. Nobody thinks they call off anything any more than we thought they were ready to negotiate. Then you would have a... then you'd resume again and then have another party. Then we'll meet that one when we get to it. We don't want to speculate on that. But my judgment is we'd resume again pretty strong. And if they can't do it this way, well, we'll do it another way. We want to do it every way in the world we can. And we're just hoping and praying that this'll have some appeal to them. They'll stop a few of their ferries for a few days. If so, we can pull in a little farther. They can pull in a little farther, work ourselves out of it like we did kind of Cuba. Okay, I'll look for a thing in the morning. Good. Bye.