Extracted text

OCR Page 1 of 106
TELCON President/Kissinger 8:40 a.m. - 5/12/72 K: Hello. P: You're going to do the Republican senators? K: Yes, but I've just been told that they couldn't work out enough of a group so apparently it's been cancelled. P: Oh, I see. What was the matter - they didn't want to come or it's Friday? K: I guess it's Friday, Mr. President. P: That's my guess. K: I had it on my calendar for a P: That's all right. You'll see them another time. K: But I'm going to see Howard K. Smith. I have him on the list today. P: Fine. K: Oh, on the military situation, the attack on An Loc is again very massive. They put in 8, 000 rounds of artillery yesterday which was about 600 to 700 tons. We put all our B-52 strikes in there but they've just completed so we don't have a report how effective they were. But apparently they weren't effective enough to stop the artillery. But the casualties have to be very heavy. The VC claims they have taken half of An Loc. We called out there and MACV claims they haven't; MACV has often been right where our military has been wrong. P: That's right. K: But I am having them check it right this minute. I haven't got the report back. And in the rest of the area it's quiet. The attack on Kontum hasn't developed yet. There are ahead which is about 25 miles northwest of Kontum which has been under attack for four days and where they broke off the contact - the other side broke off the contact so we went out and found over 300 bodies that had been killed by air strikes. At this rate of casualties it's just hard to see how they can keep it up. It's also interesting that the