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    "label": "May 6-9, 1970 [1 of 2]",
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    "title": "May 6-9, 1970 [1 of 2]",
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        "National Security Files (Nixon Administration)",
        "Henry A. Kissinger Telephone Conversation Transcripts (Telcons)"
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    "ocrText": "Mr. Kissinger/Otis Chandler\n11:10 p.m., May 6, 1970\n- 2 -\nC:\nThese kids are not sophisticated. On the surface, the\nPresident's San Clemente speech said things are going well,\n150,000 are coming out, Vietnamization is working well -- and\nsince then, there has been such an abrupt change. We are bombing\nnorth of the DMZ, and then there's this Cambodian thing. The kids\ninterpret it as the President changing his whole policy. That is why\nthe campuses are on fire. They are not sophisticated.\nK:\nMy problem is not with the kids. When I talk to kids -- I had\n10 from Princeton yesterday they were all with us. They can't\ndo much when they return to Princeton. But those kids are reachable.\nOur problem is the faculties and administrators. I had Stanford\nstudents in today. The kids were fine they didn't like it, but they\nare understanding. The faculties are the problem.\nC:\nOnce the kids understand, I agree. How do you reach those\nkids is the problem with the faculties.\nK:\nWe have two problems. The immediate problem is to get\nthrough this crisis without being driven off by a student rebellion.\nWe have to go through with it now. Would there be any negotiations\nwith the Soviets or the Chinese if our government was so weak and\nthe leadership group so feeble that they can be driven off by universities\non these issues. The second problem is how do we re-establish\ncommunications with these kids? I talked to the President tonight.\nWe will make this top priority as soon as the current operation is\nsuccessfully concluded that is June. I am going to set up a system\nby which groups like this come in regularly and systematically so we\ndon't always just see them when the town is burning. The immediate\nproblem is whether the leaders of our country can pull together in\nsuch a situation enough to separate the tactical problem from the moral\nissue. If you were in Washington, I would be delighted to sit down and\ntalk with you. We didn't want Sihanouk overthrown. We were faced\nwith a country that had asked for substantial military assistance\nbecause it was menaced by an army of 400, 000 on its flank. Say we\ndidn't give assistance; the country falls 600 miles of frontier\nwould be wide open to South Vietnam where they could fight a guerrilla\nwar. And we came to the view that we could have withdrawn 150,000\nunder these conditions. How could we have faced the American people\nnext Spring we killed another ,000 for what? This is what drove\nus crazy. We knew something might happen. The last thing we want\nto do is escalate the war."
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