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CLASSIFIED
E.O. 12930, Sept. 3.5

TELCOM

Clark Mollenhoff/Kissinger

9/8/72/ 10:50 a.m.

By: KHLW NAVA Date: 5/13/04

M: Hello Henry?

K: Yes Clark.

M: Say this lawyer Taub per Hoffa has some comments today saying you had cleared -

K: No, no - here is the story - this is for your information, I don't want to be quoted. I got a call from Harold Gibbons who is you know Vice President of the Teamster Union saying that he had a matter of extreme national importance to discuss with me - he didn't tell me what it was. I said alright I will be in San Clemente next week, call me. The next thing I knew Gibbons and Taub actually showed up - I hadn't even heard of Taub until then. Without an appointment - no let's say that that was a misunderstanding. Taub then said that Hoffa should go to Hanoi as a negotiator and negotiate the release of Prisoners. I said - no one negotiates for us and we do not send private people to negotiate. And he asked for my help in getting permission from the parole board to go. I said two things: (1) no one negotiates for us and we do not want you to go on our behalf, (2) whether you go as a private citizen is your business and it is between you and the legal authorities. I cannot intervene in this. And if you want to go as a private citizen you have to take that up with Kleindienst or whoever else handles these cases. After that, Taub called me once more and asked me whether I would meet Hoffa - to talk to him prior to his going to Hanoi as a private citizen and I said no. Then Taub called again and I didn't take his call and he made some - and he indicated well maybe he would have to make a public statement, so I had Haig call him and Gibbons to say that we could not tolerate such methods and we could not have him speak on our behalf.

M: Now, when did this take place?

K: All of this happened before the middle of July. Thirdly, we then called Hoffa and told him that he couldn't represent us - that what he did as a private citizen was his business. You see what I mean?

M: Yeah.

K: As the National Security Adviser I can only take the position he can't speak for the U.S. Government and finally we passed a message to the North Vietnamese saying we wanted to make clear that Hoffa in no sense spoke for us and that was the extent of our involvement and all of this was completed by July 20th.