 you'll keep this call confidential. We're just getting all kinds of pressure on the morning shows of Pauline and Frank Blair stating emphatically that we were having a meeting with Mr. Casseed. Now our statement is true on this and we know more about the White House than any other source, unquote any other sort. And the situation is exactly as we told your people and everybody. We ask Mr. Casseed, if he would like to visit with us as other heads of state are at the Capitol or any other convenient place outside of New York, we would not be coming to New York to be a part of this operation. And we would be very glad to meet with him under those circumstances in view of the fact that he has not been able to work out his plans. Now, I want to go off the record super here. I don't know whether it's the Central Committee that's got him in problems. I don't know whether it's the Arab world. I don't know whether it's fact that they sent him off here for this job while Brezhnev called the committee together, or whether he's rushing back. I don't know whether he's feared that China would give him hell for meeting with us, but he's not following the normal procedure that a head would do. A, he didn't notify us he's even coming. He hasn't officially informed us yet that he's here, which is never done. And C, he has never been able to work out his plan. Now, he's got under consideration, but he hasn't completely rejected, but he has not accepted it. Now, we do not know what will come out of that, but in view of the fact to just keep building up with our people and with the rest of the world that we're seeking and we're just almost crawling through our news medium. And we have no, no regulation of mental. We just can't even guide them when we tell them. I think it's very bad public posture for the United States to be in this situation. So I've asked George Christian to call NBC particularly this morning and say to him that the plan is just as it was yesterday, that there has been no meeting arranged, courtesy or otherwise, New York or any other place that in view of the fact that the chairman has not been able to work it out, that Secretary Rusk will likely see him at the United Nations, period. Right. Now that's our national interest and they may not be the use of quoting some drunk or some diplomat or somebody else when you can get it direct from the horse's mouth at the last part. And I guarantee not to mislead you. I guarantee to tell you the fact. I understand that and you never have. Now, I don't know where they got the story this morning. I will look into it. We just have denied it all night long. We had two people up, denied it, but Pauline's got it and they say that somebody said the Carlisle Hotel started it. That they said that we were around looking to Carlisle Hotel. So we never thought of such a thing. I haven't been to Carlisle Hotel in years. So I don't know what, but it's so irresponsible and the Russian newspaper man, the officials are on TV this morning. They say, oh, they know they saw it on American television. So I don't want us to be responsible for building up the American people to a point where I just fall on my face and they'll say, well, Johnson's petulant. He's irritable or he's moody or something else. And that's what happens. It's this damn press credibility. It's not our credibility. So I want to deny or just frankly say that the chairman has not been able to accept the invitation of the president to come to Washington, to Camp David, to Philadelphia or to any other mutual agreeable place. Therefore, it is likely Secretary Rusk will see him at the United Nations period. Now, if there's anything else that gets off of that one inch, I'll see a George Christian called Joe man and number one. All right. It's conceivable if I thought I could avoid World War three that I would march right down to the Russian embassy in a minute. But that's not conceivable now. And the situation as of this moment at nine o'clock is the chairman has been unable to work out his plans whereby he can accept our invitation as others are. Morals coming today, Crogs coming tomorrow, King Hussain's probably coming now all kinds of heads of state coming here from all over the world. But I'm not going to run and meet Crog out at Denmark out in Minnesota. And I'm not going to plan to meet German Keesinger when he comes next week out in Milwaukee. I'm not planning to meet Hussain up in New York. I certainly understand your point. And we will straighten it out. I don't know. You know, Pauline had the first story of Kaseigan coming here. She has some pretty good sources that I believe she got that from the polls. And it may be that that's where she got this one. But she is not, as you know, irresponsible. I know that we will. All I want is just a correction of the facts. The facts are that the Kaseigan has not accepted our invitation that we extended it on Thursday night. Although I think this is important for us from American standpoint to put out, we are good hosts. But this is the first time I know of in history when the country has not even been officially informed that a man is here. That's number one. Number two, I don't know of any plans where they had to state those other places to receive them. That's number two. Now, number three, we did tell him we'll have a social event. We'll have a dinner. We'll have a luncheon. We'll have substitute talks or we won't. We'll do anything you want to do. But you're invited to come to Washington, to Hot Springs, to Philadelphia, to New Jersey. We'll work out something if it's agreeable to you. Now, the fact is that he's getting back home and he hasn't come through with his reply that he can come to any of these places we've specified. Now, I don't want to just cut off things so hard that I couldn't do it under any circumstances. But I say to you, as of this moment, he has not replied. So I've instructed Rusk to see him up there if that's agreeable. So I don't want to either look like I'm hard to get. I don't want to see him or that I'm shoving for him. And Franco's story this morning says Johnson's unsuccessful and really fighting him. Now, I'm not doing either. I'm just trying to be a normal human. Do you have any feelings why he came here, Mr. Price? Yes, I think that there's two things. I think one, that they had a terrible situation in the Arab world and they want to try to get as much of that smell off of them as they can. I think that's one. I think that there are some other things opening a little bit that might indicate that they have some problems. That it could be a Truman MacArthur thing or something. President sent him off here and is making a lot of big point of telling everybody how he's running everything. And he's calling in everybody now that he's gone. And he's sent to the president off to Cairo. And he's called the Central Committee together. Now, it's kind of hard if I would send Mike Mansfield and John McCormick off to Mexico and then I'd call a special session of the Congress. Yes, it is. Or if I would get ready to declare a war and I'd send the Dean Ruskin, Bob McNamara out of the country. Now, we don't know why they're doing that, but we know he's frantically talking back and forth and trying to get out of here. And he's probably leaving tomorrow evening. And he, that originally had said 10 days and they call this party meeting. Now, we don't know what's coming out of it, but the two of them, it could be something very hard. They could be having a meeting to arm up this group and soup it up, heat up the Midwest, at mid-east. They could have a meeting to hard to rely on on Vietnam. We just don't know what it is. We do know they're having a meeting over there. And we do know this, that it's not to America's interest for me to come to New York and rope this fella and knock on his door and say, please let me in out of the rain. I got to see it, take care of my local television. We ought to be courteous. We ought to be polite. I didn't say, I said, we ought to marry our differences in my speech. I didn't have any propaganda. I didn't charge him with anything like he did us. And we're willing to meet you almost anytime, any place you want to. But if he's afraid to do it on account of China saying he sells out, if he's afraid to do it because the Arab world or he's afraid to do it because he got burned in London and got held when he got back home on account of his trying to sell a Vietnamese out from China and his own people, he may not want to get charged with that same thing now. Now if he doesn't, I don't want to embarrass him. And I don't want him to say that Johnson is trying to get me in a hole with Arabs or the Chinese or the North Vietnamese, anybody else. So we can handle this thing except for these damn positive statements that say that the president is meeting him in the car aisle on a social visit. And what they ought to do, and they get a report like that, is call George Christian and say, is this true? He will say, no, they can immediately say the UP ticker that says he's done is untrue according to George Christian. I don't think you have a license to tell what the president's going to do when the president pays a man around the clock to answer you. And they don't need masking. And they quote some irresponsible diplomat or some hotel though. I think you know we want to report it correctly. I do. But it's not a good way to do it. Why do I have all this press office that they won't ask? Why do you take a goddamn car to our hotel? That's a good point. And I think it's your news staff ought to be instructed that when you're going to quote the president's and the position of the president of the United States, he's got people hired there that'll give you that. And you just call them. George Christian told me he had called all night long and he told every damn one of them the same thing that this is not true. Well, they certainly should have carried the denial. I agree to that. Thank you, George. Thank you.