 And I realized at the minute I said it, but I wasn't going to take time to correct it. This was a real story. Well surely there's been somebody in the press to correct you, hasn't there? Sam was trying to persuade this director to do a picture for him, and the director told him why it would be a lousy picture, that he just couldn't be associated with it. It was a lousy screenplay and so forth. And so he didn't do it. Well Sam went ahead and made the picture with someone else, and it was lousy, and it was a big flop. And some time later they were talking another picture, and someone brought up the first director's name as a possibility, and Sam said, no, he's associated with my greatest failure. Ready? Yes, I'll give you one minute, and I think you don't want any more than that. No, that'll be fine. Mr. President, we've been listening to the expressions of congressional concern over our policy in Central America, reading some of the public opinion polls that suggest some public reservation about our policy there. Are you charting an unpopular course? Are you going to get what you want in terms of aid for that part of the world? Well I hope so, and I think it's absolutely vital to this country and to the world that we do. But I think what explains the possibility of it being unpopular is a lack of knowledge in the part of people, of where the area is. It's a strange thing, but people are so familiar with the Middle East and the other trouble spots in the world, and it's hard for them to realize that here in Central America, as I pointed out the other night, closer to us than many cities that are in the continental United States are to the capital of the United States. And it is vital. It is most important because Nikolai Lenin a long time ago targeted Latin America as literally the final step in the assault on capitalism, which he said would find its last bastion in the United States. And today, when you stop to think that the Soviet Union is putting 15 percent of its total military aid worldwide into Latin America, and we're only putting 2 percent of the aid that we're giving worldwide in Latin America. You don't accept the notion that this is a homegrown revolution. This is part of an East-West conflict then in your judgment. There's no way to escape that, but let me also say this about Latin America and Central America, these countries. There's no question about the history of these countries being one that is contrary to ours in that you had a society of a top layer and then a bottom layer in poverty, social injustices. El Salvador has a very violent history and a half a century of military rule over the people. And finally, however, El Salvador, the revolution has taken place. You have a government now that submitted a year ago to an election, and more than 80 percent of the people turned out to vote in that election, even though the guerrillas destroyed hundreds of trucks and buses to keep them from getting to the polls, threatened them with death, told them if they tried to vote they would be murdered. But the people turned out to vote. And so you can say here is a government that was chosen by the people. In addition to that, this government is moving as fast as it can to reverse the course of decades and decades and institute human rights and democratic procedures. We had a team of congressmen, it wasn't ours, I mean a team of our Congress, both parties went down as observers in that election. They came home with such stories that you can't imagine of the people, the sacrifice they made to vote. I told in the air about the woman wounded by the guerrillas who refused to leave the line for medical treatment until she had voted. But they told another thing I didn't mention on the air. And that is that every time the press that is stationed down there and have been covering this revolution went by, the people in mass would chant, tell the truth. Now what do we have? We have guerrillas trained in Cuba, trained in Nicaragua, backed and armed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, as a matter of fact many of their weapons are American weapons that came all the way from Vietnam. They were weapons that we abandoned in Vietnam and the communist government of that country by way of the other communist bloc nations brought them in for the guerrillas. And so we're trying to bring about the kind of revolution that has been taking place in Central America. Costa Rica today is one of the most solid democracies. They don't even have an army. Honduras has gotten rid of military rule and gone democratic. Guatemala the same thing is happening. What we need to see in all of America is this turn to democracy. And I've had a dream since before I came here, this job. The western hemisphere is so unique. We all have a common heritage. We all came mainly from European stock to these great undeveloped continents. From the South Pole to the North Pole, there are basically only two languages, with the exception of Brazil and the Portuguese language, it's either Spanish or English. From pole to pole, unlike any place else in the world, we worship the same God. Six hundred million people with the great still untapped resources of these two great continents. What a power for good in the world if we could become equal partners and neighbors. Where else in the world do you have a situation with all these various countries and all their own culture and all that? But they can cross a border into another country, here in this hemisphere, and they're still among Americans. We are all Americans. Does it bother you that you have to certify, as you will again next month, that there is improvement in the human rights condition in El Salvador? It bothers me because we're running the risk of being very insulting. We have a heritage we have to overcome in Latin America of the days of gunboat diplomacy. They remember that, and this is why these people who think that we're in danger of sending troops into a place of that kind, no, our best friends don't want them. They don't want a reawakening of that type of thing, of a Yankee imperialism, as they called it many decades ago. But it bothers me in the sense that we're helping all we can. They've gone for land reform. They've gone for elections. They're going to have another election before this year is out to elect a presidential election. And they're doing all the things that spell democracy down there. One of the other areas, in addition to free elections that are the hallmark of democracy, are also the notion of dialogue, of talk of negotiation. And we have not encouraged the government of El Salvador very much to engage in negotiation with the guerrillas. Yes, we have. And as a matter of fact, they have put together an amnesty commission. Here's where the difference lies in some of the people, even here in our own government, that are talking negotiation. What they're talking is what we did in Laos many years ago, in which we forced the government of Laos to take the path at Laos, the guerrillas there, which were communists supported and backed, and bring them into the government without the permission of the people. And pretty soon the path at Laos was the government of Laos. Now this is the kind of negotiation they're talking. These people, 80% of them turn out to vote. They have a right to expect that any people brought in to the government will come in by the electoral process, submit themselves to the voters. So what they're offering down there is amnesty to the guerrillas, lay down their guns, come in and participate, run candidates for their viewpoint, whatever it may be. But what some others are urging is that a negotiation take place in which the elected government of El Salvador allow these people at the point of a gun to simply come in and claim a share of government without the vote of the people. Mr. President, at your most recent news conference you were asked about Nicaragua and about establishing our relations with Nicaragua, and you said, when they quit meddling in the affairs of a neighbor whose government was duly elected, a legitimate government I believe was the term you used, critics of your policy will suggest that that's precisely what we're doing when we continue supplying support for the countries who are to some extent publicly trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. Well, a brief history I think is in here, and I'll try to make it as brief as I can. I realize I'm giving long answers to these questions. Nicaragua had a very authoritarian one-man government under Samosa. Granted, that government was friendly to the United States. But when finally the people rose up in a revolution, and this was during the Carter administration, the United States did not lift a finger in behalf of the Samosa government. And the Organization of American States even recommended to Samosa that he step down, that he resign, which he did. And the revolutionary government promised democracy, elections by the people, human rights, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, all of these things. Then when the government got in, very reminiscent of Castro's takeover of Cuba. There was a Soviet representative, and Castro of Cuba was present. They openly hailed this new Nicaragua now as the first implantation of communism on the mainland of the Americas. And the leaders who were in charge professed that the Soviet and Cuba, those were the allies, and that the other countries of Central America were to be the next places for this kind of revolution. Now in doing so, of great many people and factions had come together in that revolution. This group, like the Pathet Laos, ousted all of those. Some were even imprisoned, but others were just exiled and had to get out of the country. The guerrillas in this case are those exiled revolutionaries, who really all they want is a restoration of the promises that the Sandinistas made to the Organization of American States that they wanted democracy. They have now totalitarianism of communist nature, and they immediately set out, they are directing the revolution in El Salvador. They're providing the arms, they're providing the training for all of that. But when that government first got in, under the previous administration, our country immediately went to them with financial aid, with help believing that we were supporting a government similar to the government of El Salvador. And President Carter withdrew that aid when they discovered that they had not only broken their pledge about democracy, they had broken their pledge to us that they would not support the revolution, the communist attempt of revolution in El Salvador. Now how can they, doing what they're doing to overthrow a duly elected government, protest when the people that are now rebelling in their own country against them were revolutionaries themselves and who only want the promises of the revolution kept? So what we have said, and we continue to try and meet with them, we have said to the Sandinistas to that government, look we stand by ready to deal with you bilaterally if you'll quit doing this and return to what the revolution was all about. So I don't think there's anything, if there's any strangeness at all, it is that this government by the point of a gun which turned against its own people is now trying to overthrow a duly elected government. On that basis, should we not seek to overthrow that government openly rather than covertly? Well, of course we have laws with regard to that, but what our main purpose was in helping our friends down there, and when our friends, I mean other countries, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, and also, if you might say harassment of the Nicaraguan government was, that it is through Nicaragua and from Nicaragua that the weapons are going to the guerrillas in El Salvador and we're trying to interdict and cut off that supply. We've had our ships in the bay, we've built that radar facility for surveillance, we've helped the Contras, but we haven't shown any arms that we have recovered in the last year and a half. Are we interdicting arms? I think there has been some, but the interdiction is being done by the Salvadorans themselves. On the other front that has now been opened up along the border with Costa Rica, Pastora's group have told us that while they're not professing to interdict weapons, their purpose is to take Managua. They insist they have been offered support by the CIA for that. Would that be illegal? All I can tell you is that the oversight commission on intelligence activities, that's the citizens, the civilian group that was established some several years ago during the Ford administration that is to oversee and make sure that never again do any of our intelligence agencies do anything that violates our laws. They told me the other day that they have thoroughly investigated and that everything that we are doing down there is within the law and I have not violated the law at all. President, for those who have the hope that harmony can be returned to the hemisphere, can you give them encouragement this evening, particularly those 250,000 Salvadoran refugees who are in Los Angeles tonight? Yes, although the continued attempts at interference on the part of some of the committees in the Congress are making it difficult, they have finally voted the funds, not all that we'd asked for. It's a mere pittance that we're actually putting up down there in support. We need more and we need to be allowed to further train the Salvadoran Army so that it can compete with these professionally trained soldiers. As I said in the air in that broadcast, they are not peasants with muskets. These are professionally trained guerrilla fighters and incidentally, let me point out also what Nicaragua is doing. When I said we were trying to help our friends in Costa Rica and Honduras, remember that they have radical groups and guerrillas supported by Nicaragua that are sniping at them, not in the proportion and in the sense that it's going on in El Salvador, but they have their guerrilla wars. So there's not much hope that we're going to have harmony in the hemisphere where Nicaragua is concerned in. And yet Nicaragua, unlike Cuba, all they could stop right now and alter their course. The Seven Man Council that has been formed in opposition to the Nicaraguan government is made up of a number of people who were actually imprisoned by Samosa, which I think proves their democratic leanings. And they were part of the Sandinista revolution but were cast aside because they weren't communist. And you're reaching out to Nicaragua to try to establish that kind of a force? We've done that. We've let them know over and over again. And there apparently is no communication of that kind with them. Thank you, Mr. President. How is that for accepting a cue, huh? I know, I filibustered there on a few questions but I was trying to cover all bases. Did we get enough of it in? I think so. Yeah. That's an amazing thing. The Los Angeles now, I guess, has the biggest colony of El Salvadorans outside of the country itself. 250,000. 250,000. And they probably entered illegally across the Mexican border. In fact, virtually all of them.