 We're fighting in Southeast Asia. Depended upon their production, if they had any doubt about it, we'll stay there until they resolve their doubts. And then I had the chiefs there and the service secretaries, and we spent about 45 minutes going through it item by item and tying directly the item off the end of the production line into the lives of our men in Southeast Asia. And I think when they left, they were all convinced from that point. Then last evening, we met with the total bargaining teams of the union and the company, about 40 or 50 of them, to let them give us a chance and let them tell us what their dispute was about. We went over in great detail, so they feel that we'll explain their positions. And it's going to be a hell of a job to settle this thing, because it's moved out of the economic controversy, which wouldn't have been too hard to settle into this philosophic set of differences between arbitration, bullwarism, regional differentials, and so on. This morning, about 8.30, Jack Connor supposed to sit individually with the company and bill works later in the morning with the union. And later today, we're going to get together again, trying to figure out what our next move is. But I've made it perfectly clear that we're going to use cash, hard lab, to set that in those words, but it's perfectly clear. We're not going to allow production to stop, no matter what that requires. And I think this holds a club over them. But I am rather pessimistic at the moment as to when and how this will be settled. Where is the merit, both sides? Yes, I think so. But in my opinion, it's more on the side of the union. But that makes it even more difficult, Mr. President, because what is really at stake here is the strength of the union. It's been a very, very weak union. And really, the only way, the only sure way of settling this strike or potential strike is to strengthen the union. And that's hardly the kind of action that the government would normally be expected to take. And it's something, of course, that Jack Connor would find it very difficult to swallow. But that's my own impression of the real issue here. Of course, business would just scream, no, I haven't. If we phrased it that way or gave any indication, that's what we were doing. But frankly, I think that is the issue, and I think that's what's going to have to be done. Now, how to do it is the problem, and we're just turning it over in our minds. I think that I had these observations. You went much farther than I had heard that you were willing to go, and I thought it was good that you did in educating the public. I think there's a good deal to the story that I did. I think there's a good deal to the story that the people that I talked to don't know much about this strike. And for the first time, national interest in the defense was really brought in yesterday. It hasn't been too much yet. The best reports you had have been going on television, and somebody put out a statement that you talked to both sides, like a Dutch uncle, which was, I would think, would be inclined to make you the very acceptable to the service people and to the people who have interest in this thing, and to the general public. I've watched the NBC and CBS. Well, I asked Arthur to put that line out, and I had the four inches of gold braid, obviously, at the McDonald's show of the pictures. You may have seen one in the post this morning, and we're trying to do everything we can to follow your, what I think is your design. I think you can do that before we use Taft Hardly. Taft Hardly would be more, more palatable. Absolutely, I completely agree with it. And now, we don't have to use Taft Hardly until you get back, that's right. And you're leaving Friday. I'm supposed to leave around Saturday night, so roughly 9, 10, 11 o'clock, and then be back early, the following Friday morning, such as 8 a.m. in the morning. Now, are you putting all the men out there that you can, especially, you can't? Yes, we are. You ought to bear in mind, you might have something unusual happen to you here any time, those that you got there, you can't, they're all right, but you might get stopped in. I know that. And we can always stop them, and we can always pull them out. So tell your boys to get whatever you can out there. Now, does this, do you have any apprehensions about this northern buildup, or this? Well, I know, a little bit, but I'm not nearly as concerned about it, Mr. Breslin, as I think Westie is, Westmoreland. He's very, very much concerned about it, he keeps expressing his concern in the cables, but as I sit here and look at the relative strength of the forces, I think I just can't believe that they can build up enough there to seriously hurt us. They might give us a bloody nose, and we might lose 200 men a week, let's say, instead of 100 men a week for a week or two, but beyond that, I just can't see any real danger in the buildup. We're on rather delicate ground here, because I've turned down this naval gunfire proposal. I sent you a memo the day before yesterday on the subject, I don't know why you've had a chance to read it, but we're denying Westmoreland some of the support he thinks he needs, but I think we're right in denying it, and the reason for my denial is, I don't appraise the danger as great as he does. Did I, I read the report both sides, and the way I read it there, you're justified in the decision that you made. Although I think that you ought to try to get the joint chiefs and his adherents here to point out how disastrous it would be for us to inaugurate in the closing days of the Congress a new policy of this type, A and B, just on the beginning of our conference in Manila, and how the propaganda people would just wreck us. They'd say that the worst thing they did about Goldberg and your plane announcement, they'd say, just as we need to talk peace, we start to invade North Vietnam, and I think those generals, if somebody ought to be able to say that and take it themselves and say, well, they can't do this. Well, they won't, Mr. President, they won't. I silenced them a little bit on the bombing. You know, they, oh, I also have a strong recommendation from them to go back to high-fond petroleum, take out the remaining tanks there, to bomb the steel plant, the cement plant, the Phuketian airfield storage, petroleum storage, and the Kemp airfield petroleum storage, and three or four key bridges that are very sensitive in relation to Hanoi and the road transport much closer to Hanoi, and I've turned all these things down. I've got them reasonably with me on that, but I just, frankly, I just pressed them as hard as I possibly can, so that I honestly don't think I can push them into supporting me on the naval gunfire. On the other hand, they're not talking in public about it, and beyond that, when I figured out how many shots per 24 hours, we can put on that 50 miles a row, and it's only 800 to think that that can make any difference. I really got them pretty well, but they just, they're bloody in there. They're not about to come out and actually support me on it. I want them to support you, I just want them to understand that you've got a peace conference coming in, you've got the end of the congressional session, and to bring a new element like this into it to be where it was, I think. So anyway, I think you justify it, whatever they do. Well, I don't think I'll have any trouble from it. On that Dan and Aircraft announcement with the Goldberg speech, we just had to do that. We had to reprogram the actions up before the committee and the committees were about to leak it, and we're in a terrible fight with them. I've got to go up to the armed services committee of the House this morning at 10 o'clock to testify on this. Rivers wanted to put through a separate bill on Aircraft, and you can imagine what Mel Laird and Lipscomb and Jerry Ford would do to you today if we had a separate bill coming through. What Rivers charges and Pike in particular charges that this is all a fraud, that you're misleading the American people, I'm misleading the American people, and the truth costs the war. It's all a political sham designed to get us past the election without disclosing what we're doing, and it's just a constant harassment, but that's what led to that damn Aircraft announcement. What, have you got an agreement that you can just come back to that alone? Yeah, that's right. I got an agreement with Rivers on it if he can hold his committee, and that's the purpose of this morning for me to go up there and let him beat me around a bit, and then hopefully after that, he'll be able to get them to sign on. What are your expenditures running now? I noticed some estimates made by the Laird. Well, they're right on the nose with about between 66 and 67 billion for the fiscal year of 67, and they're a little over the 60 billion market present. I mean, the annual rate. Well, they're running a month, I noticed the last two months they had five, Mr. President, a little over five billion. They're so erratic in this period because of some of the actions we took in June that I honestly don't know. They're just about at an annual rate for the three months of around 61 billion, I think it is. And you anticipate that for fiscal six to seven, you'll run 67. I told you, 66. Now, 24 hours after I told you that last week, we made a new estimate and looked closer to 67 and a half. We'll have another pretty decent estimate around the 19th of October, and I'll be in a better position to tell you then. You have, what did you estimate, 58? 58.3. Now, that was after, you know, we took out a billion and a half, a couple of billion that we were pretty sure at the time we needed for June 30, 67, termination of operations. Now, this 66 or 67 and a half I'm mentioning will lay the groundwork for carrying operations through June 30, 68, which means we're planning to buy in the fiscal 67, whatever we need up through June 30, 68. Matter of fact, the financial costs of the war, Mr. President, are fairly reasonable. They're not nearly as high as I was afraid they might be. We've shifted, you see, a whole year here in our preparations from June 30, 67 into combat to June 30, 68 by building the bomb inventories and the ground ammunition inventories and the replacement aircraft on that assumption. So I'm reasonably pleased with the estimates we have. What do you think it will cost us during the fiscal 68 to carry on this war that I'll be carrying it? Well, this is the wild guess now, but at 69 billion is the best estimate I have. How much of that's Vietnam? Well, you can just roughly say that we were running around 50 billion before Vietnam, Mr. President, so maybe 19 billion of it is. That's the best way I can estimate the cost of the war at the present time. Have you got any difficulties, particularly in your equipment or supply, or running short of anything? Well, we have shortages in certain new items. For example, a M16, which is a new rifle that has a very rapid fire of relatively small bore weapons. It's sort of a hand-carried machine gun in a sense, which is just the hottest item we have now. We're short on both the rifles and the ammunition, but my God, a year ago, I came back in November and personally put on order 125,000, but nobody wanted them then. But since that time, they want to completely re-equip the forces out in Southeast Asia, which were equipped with the M14, with this M16, and then re-equip the entire Marine Corps in about two thirds of the Army with it. So we're short that because of the new items. Secondly, we're short illuminating rounds, flares, shells, and other things illuminate the areas at night because of the tremendous emphasis on night infiltration and night fighting to stop it. But these are about what you'd expect under these circumstances. The rate of usage is many, many times greater than anybody anticipated. Then we have a new grenade launcher that just came into the inventory or just was authorized for use about 12 or 18 months ago. That's very short supply. There weren't two other items like that, but at the moment I have 145,000 tons of bombs on the ground out in Southeast Asia and another 120 on the way in transit. So that's 265,000 tons of bombs there and we're using 40,000 or about 43,000 tons a month. Frankly, we're going to just snow the place under with bombs and I'm doing it purposely to make them cry stop. So the specific answer to your question is purposefully for what? To make them cry stop. Oh, yeah, cry, yeah, that's what I meant. To make them cry stop. Now on the whole, we're in good shape. Joe also called me yesterday that he'd back on to talk and said the major impression he brought back was that it was the most magnificently equipped and trained force that he had ever heard of, America fielding in a war. And I think that's a pretty fair appraisal. Doesn't mean we won't have problems. For example, naval aircraft. We've shifted so many sorties up into North Vietnam and into that Hanoi area and the Navy is bearing such a high percentage of the flights in there and the loss rates are so heavy that our naval aircraft losses are quite a bit higher than we anticipated. And this means a little problem for maybe six to 12 months. So we've got a few problems of this kind but nothing at all serious. Would you let your people know before you go out there that I want a good photo report on how our bond thing's working out about 10% and then make some checks so when you get out there you can activate them a little bit and have them ready for you. So go out with them before you get there and tell them you won't go into it. I will. Now in this pacification, we missed you yesterday because you had to go to all the meetings. Decided that you have to, they say that Lodge is gonna object very strenuously. I feel very strongly that it ought to go to the military. I don't think it can run anything anywhere I don't think they have personnel. I think what personnel they have is generally not too competent to ex-school teachers, things of that kind. They have 30 of their people shot out there. Advertising, trying to get them, I don't know. Get them.