Nixon Goes to China (Part 2 of 3) | The Nixon Era
Whistlestop: Presidential History and Trivia
Slate Podcasts
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2018
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode of Whistlestop travels back to July 10, 1971 when Henry Kissinger is reported to have had a terrible stomach ache while abroad but was really working covertly to promote President Nixon's international agenda.
Whistlestop is Slate's podcast about presidential history. Hosted by Political Gabfest host John Dickerson, each installment will revisit memorable moments from America's presidential carnival.
Join Slate Plus for full, ad-free access to Whistlestop and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Whistlestop show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whistlestopplus to get access wherever you listen.
Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank. Research by Brian Rosenwald.
Email: whistlestop@slate.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to whistlestop, a podcast of the presidency. I'm John Dickerson of CBS this morning. This is part two of Nixon goes to China. |
| 0:11.7 | Our whistle stop is July 10, 1971. The Associated Press reports that the National Security Advisor of the United States, Henry Kissinger, has a stomach disorder. |
| 0:22.4 | The report said it caused him to cancel a formal dinner in Pakistan. What we later learned |
| 0:29.3 | was that he had been stricken with a rare form of stomach disorder you can only get |
| 0:35.0 | when you are in Pakistan. Believe me, it's a local malady, very |
| 0:39.0 | Pakistani specific. It's known in the diplomatic trade as the not being in Pakistan at all disease. |
| 0:47.1 | It has a very specific set of symptoms. It manifests itself when the patient says he is in Pakistan, |
| 0:52.5 | lolling in his sickbed, but is really scuttling around China on a secret mission for the president to reestablish ties with the communist country. |
| 1:02.4 | Kisinger had been in Pakistan, but then he slipped away, in secret, to meet with the Chinese premier Zhou An Lai, |
| 1:10.6 | to see whether there was any chance of a warming |
| 1:12.9 | in relations with America and a possible visit by the American president. |
| 1:17.3 | Kissinger told his Chinese counterpart during the meeting. |
| 1:20.7 | In 1954, Secretary Dulles believed that it was America's mission to fight communism all |
| 1:25.9 | around the world and for the U.S. to be the |
| 1:27.8 | principal force, to engage itself in every struggle at every point of the world at any point |
| 1:32.2 | of time. President Nixon operates, this is Kissinger, on a different philosophy. We do not deal |
| 1:38.4 | with communism in the abstract, but with specific communist states on the basis of their specific |
| 1:42.9 | actions towards us and not as an |
| 1:44.9 | abstract crusade. We believe that if people want to defend themselves, they must do it on the |
| 1:49.7 | basis of their own efforts and not on the basis of the efforts of a country 10,000 miles away. |
| 1:55.4 | Oh, say, like America. So when we offer to withdraw from Vietnam, it is not in order to devise some trick to re-enter in some other manner, |
| 2:05.2 | but rather that we want to base our foreign policy on the realities of the present and not on the dreams of the past. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.